Instax hack

Once applied, it should look like this image. See how the trimmed area will continue to the left past the viewfinder? This is to block any light that may shine through the viewfinder. During reassembly, the foam will prevent the front and back of the Wide from mating properly.

Once screwed in place it will hold its shape. If you have any other questions or concerns about this mod, please contact me. Skip to content The Blog. This camera could well of been designed by an uninspired child who just had a tantrum and scribbled down how an instant camera should look like! Now I must not complain. I payed a mere 6 euros for the Instax wide.

So make it even more ugly while showing it some love! In fact in the past it is usually the Russians who make replicas of Japanese cameras. However this time around the Japanese have decided it was their turn. So they have turned the tables around and decided to copy a Russian camera — and low and behold the birth of the Instax.

Initially the Instax was released to consumers in with the Instax Mini and was based on those earlier Kodak instant film systems, having the same film speed and dye order. After the Instax came the Instax wide. Now I am not quite finished with the ugly bashing for now. But it is time to re-engineer, to add some missing features to this epic lump of modern pre-millennial plastic. Only when I had discovered a couple articles on how to modified this lump of a camera — Hack it into submission!

This prevents the print from coming out after the shutter. Which in turn allows you to take another shot on the same print. Hence a double exposure. However to achieve this a reset switch across the eject sensor connections is required to fool the camera that it has ejected the print out at the top of the camera.

Without the eject reset switch the camera would go into error mode. Camera manufacturers made special instant film cartridges that could be swapped for roll film, and charged through the teeth for them. Unwilling to shell out big bucks, [Isaac Blankensmith] hacked his own instant film back for his Hasselblad medium-format camera. The unlucky donor camera was a Fujifilm Instax, a camera that uses film packs similar to those used by Polaroid and Kodak instant cameras from the 70s and 80s.

Several of these cameras were dissected — carefully; those flash capacitors pack a wallop — and stripped down to the essential film-handling bits. An adapter was fabricated from laser-cut acrylic to mount the film back to the Hasselblad, with care taken to match the original focal plane. The best part: the whole build took just 48 hours from conception to first shots.

From replacing the film with a printer to an upgrade to mm film , instant cameras in general and Polaroids in particular seem to have quite a following among hackers. This short acts as a brake, keeping the motor from coasting freely. When you press the trigger, power is applied to the relay, which turns on the motor and applies power to the relay, through the eject sensor switch.

When you release the trigger, the relay stays energized until the eject sensor switch opens the circuit, de-energizing the relay, and stopping the motor.

I had an Agfa Commander laying around. I removed all the internal electronics and optics, and opened up the hole on the front of the camera, then mounted the lens. Focus was achieved by inserting an empty film cartridge with a piece of frosted tape where the film normally resides. I retracted the original lens barrel with the lens set to infinity and looked at the image on the tape with a loupe, looking at a distant target.

I then taped the original lens barrel into place. Judicious use of epoxy and aluminum flashing tape to hold things in place, and to seal against light leaks. This time I went the opposite route. I replaced the on-board electronics with a microcontroller, display, motor driver and light meter.

Instead of a lens, I used a pinhole, and I re-purposed the shutter to work with the pinhole. The only compelling reason to use the Fuji body to begin with is the motorized film transport mechanism.

It is an interesting bit of work, one motor serves to extend the lens now removed and eject the film. It does this with a neat little clutch and a direction reversal of the motor.