Film photographer and YouTuber Willem Verbeeck recently set out on a fun project that will appeal to portrait photographers, film lovers, Polaroid fans, and large format shooters alike. He teamed up with a camera store to shoot 8x10 polaroid portraits of strangers in Brooklyn.
LA Times photographer Jay L. Clendenin is one of our favorite photographers. Incredibly creative, he frequently manages to surprise and delight us with his unusual portrait assignments. His recent 8x10 portraits of US Olympic athletes are a perfect example.
Fine art and portrait photographer Edouard Janssens -- the man behind the 1 to 100 years project we featured some time ago -- recently decided that he wanted to begin using large-format instant film to shoot an art series of "eerie" portraits. In order to do this, he had to painstakingly acquired several pieces of expensive gear, and during this search he stumbled on one very special find: a box of 8x10 Polaroid instant film that had expired in October of 1978.
This foam core 8x10 camera was created by Daire Quinlan, the same guy that attached a 90 year old lens to his camera with homemade bellows.
The lens is an Industar 37 Russian large format 300mm designed for their FKD cameras. The shutter is a Sinar, takes standard 8x10 film holders.
Quinlan exposes onto photo paper instead of film, and focuses the camera by sliding the rear box forward and backward.