Hundreds of Cameras Bears the Lolaroid

My wife and I spent the first few years of our time together traveling around the United States and Canada, stopping in antique stores and thrift stores and finding various cameras. We shared many of them (106 actually) on our site Camera History Project. Together, we learned about various lens types, SLR vs. TLR, How 135 and 35mm are the same, and a ton more. But we also got to spend a lot of time with each other on a shared passion.

Moving 80 miles from the rural South collar counties of Chicago all the way to the North of Chicago, we ended up packing up our displays and shelves and really didn’t look at them as much as we did before. We spent eight years rehabbing a 1937 farmhouse, having kids, and driving over three hours commuting for work and it just didn’t make as much sense to keep it going.

Then we moved once more… again South, but 965 miles down to Texas. No surprise, I packed up 10-15 of the famous Black and Yellow totes full of cameras, accessories, boxes, film, etc.

Four years later, we find that we now have a storage unit full of holiday decorations (40%) and about 60% full of cameras. It was time to start going through and selling these.

Well, in two months, I’ve made ~$900 selling off some (a tiny fraction) of the stuff I have laying around on eBay. It’s a lot of work, since I have to go through boxes and boxes, cleaning them up, testing for functionality, taking multiple pictures, researching the market, and creating posts. Then I have to buy enough crap from Amazon to have enough boxes to ship the stuff back out again.

But AI told me a camera was worth $300

Enter: Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera. It’s a cool one, no doubt. And I was happy to throw it up for $14.95 + shipping. But oddly, eBay didn’t have a suggested price, so I asked my good friend AI:

Okay, so throwing “Untested, As-Is” in the description is going to really suck if I have something worth 4-6 times more than the low end. It certainly stopped me from listing @ $14.95.

How do you test this thing?

Polaroid SX-70 and 600 films were discontinued for years. That was a good reason why I got the Polaroids I have (probably 30-40) for pretty cheap. Then, these folks bought the equipment and IP for Polaroid film production and started it back up again. They want ~$20 for a pack of film, and I’m not spending that on a camera to test it… But I’m stuck, because in these cameras, there is no battery compartment — the film actually has an integrated battery and connections:

I had a few open packs of film laying around, but likely the last time they saw a camera was in the mid 1980’s…. So I had to figure out a solution.

Enter: The Lolaroid

First thing I did was remove the existing film and break the glued tab off the front of the film:

Here’s the battery pack — don’t get excited for a clean desk because this shit gets worse as I go on:

The battery pack isn’t marked with voltage nor polarity — but Google helped with voltage — it’s 6vDC. Polarity wasn’t impossible to figure out, there was ~1.5v surface charge still on this thing, so I just tested it with the meter, marked it, and shoved it back in:

This is an actual picture of me:

Supplies Needed:

• Relatively thin cardboard Amazon Box
• Wire
• Gorilla Tape
• Aluminum Foil
• Scissors
• Power Supply or battery pack that gives a safe 6v

That’s right, mark the top of the cardboard at the distance of the center of the terminals on the existing film, cut small notches and fold it over the back.

Gorilla tape

Line the bottom up as well, Gorilla tape

Roll up some aluminum foil just like you did when you were in high school, then flatten it. Legal note: Don’t write Lolaroid on yours or I’ll sue the shit out of you. That trademark is MINE.

Though I will sell you licensing rights on my eBay.

Determine the religion of one of the foils and throw a touch of clear tape where it won’t be visible in the contact areas of the container.

Reassemble the same way you took it apart

Ensure both polarity and supply voltage

This camera was fully agape, ready to become the recipient of the MacGyver Electric Chair award…

Damn it — there’s these metal pawls in the way so I can’t insert anything but the expected film type

But we don’t follow rules here, this is the 80’s you see — big hair, rebellion, and side cutters were the dream. Cut those tabs off. Take that, format wars.

This camera doesn’t have the blockers, and you can see the copper contacts for the battery.

Done.

If you didn’t let out the magic smoke, go ahead and defile all of our ancestor’s sum of photographic knowledge from 40 years ago: