Polaroid 250 & Fujifilm FP-100c in Paris : the most beautiful monuments

I shot with my Polaroid 250 and Fujifilm FP-100c the first time this September 2017. The weather was nice most of the time, with clouds and a little rain sometimes. It is difficult to control the exposure with the 250. It is automatic, you have to rely on the internal lightmeter ; there is an optical sensor close to the lens. As my model tends to underexpose the pictures, I placed a piece of paper on the sensor and made a small hole in the middle. This way, the camera think that it’s darker than it really is, and make a longer exposure. There is as well a dial around the lens “darken-lighten” that you can adjust. I used this dial usually to darken when my pictures were overexposed.

It was a really fun to shoot with this camera and the peel apart film. Every time you pull out the picture from the camera, there is a surprise, you never know how the picture is gonna look like. and when you start to peel the negative apart from the positive , when the picture is sharp, well exposed and well framed, it is a delight to see the result showing slowly. When you succeed, the result is usually beautiful, the FP-100c is one of the best instant film ever made. Unfortunately, they are not produced anymore and they are difficult to find and expensive.

you can see below the videos that I shot during the photowalk, the scan of the pictures, and the scan of the negatives that I reclaimed.

my first picture of the day, at the cathedral of Paris, Notre Dame ; a little bit overexposed

I turned the dial toward “darken”, and I shot it again. and this time I have a boat!

Paris Town Hall, l’Hotel de Ville

The Eiffel Tower from the pedestrian walkway going to the Seine river and the Champ de Mars

This is the view from Place du Trocadero

in this video you can see how I shot these first pictures :

L’Arc de Triomphe

I reclaimed the negative by applying some bleach on the dark side. Then I went to a lab in Bangkok to make it scan. It was super expensive!!! 300 Thai Baht  (9 USD) per scan!!! They use an Imacon 949 Flextight.  The Tiff file out of the scan weight 500Mb. 11141X9000 pixels.

I took another one to have the sun on the monument. It was cloudy, I had to be fast!

The Sacre Coeur, Basilic of Paris. It was raining…

this negative is my favorite! I love the vintage look, the colors, and the general atmosphere. this original tiff file weighted 500 Mb and the dimension was 15101 x 12000

Place de la Concorde. overexposed

I took another one, well exposed

the negative has a great look as well :

The Eiffel Tower at night, from the Champ de Mars. I had no tripod nor cable release. not an easy shot, but finally I was happy with the result.

sometimes there are some sparkling lights….