Fuji GW690ii and Instax Film

One of my favorite things about shooting film is the physicality of it.  Along with the knowledge that your photo exists physically on a medium inside your camera after you take it, there is also the ability to do whatever you want to it and alter any part of the process.  You can put nice film in a crappy camera, and put crappy film in a nice camera.  Hell, you don't even have to be using film.  Or a camera for that matter...  Anyway, this project involved both film and cameras.  

Let me introduce you to my Fuji GW690ii.  It's a medium format camera and it shoots 6x9 cm frames onto 120 size film, which is about as big as you get shooting onto roll film.  I'm holding a frame of it in the first picture.

With all the arguments you get about full frame digital vs. crop, this camera wrecks them both.  This is one of the few things that film still holds over digital -- larger formats.  Most of the history of the film camera involved getting its size down to 35mm.

It's also a bit of a beast.  Here it is next to an 800 page hardcover and a coffee mug.  It has the nickname "Texas Leica" because it focuses by rangefinder like a Leica, but is at least twice the size and weight.

This a photo I took with it a while back in Maine, on Kodak TMax 100.  The 80mm f/3.5 lens is incredibly sharp.

Anyway, that's the camera.  I want to show you what I did with it today.  I noticed that inside the camera, there was a little rim along the film plane that just happens to perfectly fit a frame of Fuji Instax Mini instant film, so I got to thinking...

I ran to the basement and cut a piece of wood and painted it black to hold the film in place and act as a light shield.  I added a piece of wooden chopstick to fit into one of the grooves inside the camera.  I had to to get it to fit as closely as possible to prevent light leaks.  

Then, inside a changing bag, I moved a frame of unexposed film from my Instax to the GW690ii, and put the wood in place over it.  Then I ran to the living room and took a picture of my cat.

Then I ran back to the changing bag to move the undeveloped frame back from the GW690ii to the Instax, and took a dark frame with the Instax so it could spit it out and develop it.  I had to do this because of the way instant film works: the wider border on the white frame is a packet of developer fluid.  When you take a photo, the camera pushes it out and rollers in the exit slot of the camera squeeze the developer evenly across the film plane.

I had to do this twice to get it right because of the off-centered framing (the second picture was actually the first one I took).

And I did this all just because I could.  I mean, sure the GW690ii's optics are light years ahead of the Instax and I get control over exposure and a few extra stops of maximum aperture, but there's no pressing reason to load instant film into places it doesn't belong other than, as I said before, the fun of shooting analog.

I kind of wish I had more pictures to illustrate the process of getting the film from the Instax to the GW690ii and back because there were a few nuances -- there's a thin flap of plastic over the opening in the Instax cartridge where the film comes out, and you have to move that out of the way to get the film back in.  You'll also want to make sure you're loading the film in the right direction while you fumble around inside the changing bag.

This is just more of a "look what I did" post than a tutorial.  I'm not really sure how many people own this specific camera and are interested in doing this themselves, but if there's more demand, I'll do a more detailed play-by-play, including measurements for the wooden back.