ProPack Blues

It’s taken me forever and a day to figure out this whole blogging thing. I’ve pondered actually doing it for a long time. Part of me says, “who’s really gonna want to read anything I write?”And the other part of me says, “This could be a decent creative outlet.” The creative outlet side obviously won out.

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My husband, Roman, and I recently celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary (thank you, thankyouverymuch). He got me a Polaroid ProPack, a camera I’ve been hunting for for a long time:



We go thrift shopping nearly every weekend, and on every excursion I think, “THIS could be the day...” But it never was. I purchased many old Polaroids at bargain Goodwill prices, but I never found that elusive ProPack. I discovered ProPacks when doing research on emulsion lifts a few years back. I’d insanely decided it was a fabulous idea to have one on every single one of my friend’s 100 wedding invitations.

The ProPack is a newer style of land camera that has a flash (modern - no bulbs). You more or less guess at the focus, and it has a plastic lens. Polaroid discontinued producing them back in 2003. They go on ebay now for $100+.

Naturally, when I opened the ProPack (and the 20 packs of film he also gave me), I was so ready to get out and shoot. We were in Athens, Ohio, where we met when we were going to school at Ohio University. It’s a beautiful place with a gazillion photo opportunities. We went to the old mental asylum (The Ridges) that the university now owns. I know it’s SUCH a photography cliché (like shooting old barns or cemetary gravestones), but the buildings have some visually appealing architecture, and I just wanted to take pictures, dammit!

The first few pictures I took were black with some blue blotches. At first I though it was because the place was haunted, and the ghosts of mental patients past didn’t want me there. Then Roman convinced me I’d probably just loaded the film incorrectly. Because the film is fairly expensive, I wanted to leave after the two failed exposures. We went to a dark room, took the film out and reloaded.

I shot the rest of the roll with disappointing results. I managed to capture some images other than ghosts, but the blue blotches of what I think is overexposure were on every shot:



So then I thought maybe I had a bum pack of film.

I reloaded the camera the next day with a fresh pack of film and headed to the cemetery. Ok, yes, a cemetery. But see, there’s this beautiful angel statue that I used to pass while walking up State Street, and it reminds me of the good old college days. Again, I had disappointing results:




The only time I got a semi-decent result was when I let the film develop for 90 seconds, versus the recommended 60:



So I’m wondering if light is getting into the camera somehow, and how. Or maybe I just have several bad batches of film. I’m so afraid to take any more pictures for fear of wasting this expensive film! I’m on a quest for answers. Anybody out there have any suggestions?