This may be a very strange question, but did anyone ever use Polaroid film (either black-and-white or color) in the Camroc (or in a modified AstroCam 110)?

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I tried it back in the 80's on the ground. It worked but was more trouble (i.e. messy) than it was worth. I had a back from a old scope instant camera and used it on handcut flat color film. I suppose it would have worked had I flown it.

Ted Mahler

Ted, thank you for letting me know. If Polaroid *transparency* (slide) film had ever been available (there was once Polaroid-type motion picture film, which the early videotape cameras quickly made obsolete), that would have been useful for model rocket cameras because enlarged prints would have been easy to make using a simple projection copy stand or a ground-glass screen.

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NAR #54895 SR

There was, we used it all the time at a previous job. It was called Polachrome. And indeed, it was derived from Polavision technology. You got this little hand crank thingy that you used to process the film and it worked quite well. That was back in the day when you used a film recorder to make 35mm slides for PowerPoint presentations, this film was a way to get it done more quickly than sending out the film for processing.

Personally I had two Polavision cameras and a couple of Model 1 SX-70s, which I still used up until a couple of years before Time-Zero film was discontinued. Polavision was Polaroid's tour de force, as was the SX-70, and you are correct that video tapes made the Polavision system obsolete. But there were other factors as well.

Anyway, I've drifted off-topic but some day you should read Insisting on the Impossible by Victor K. McElheny. It is a good biography of Edwin Land and has whole sections/chapters on the SX-70 and Polavision.

Oh, a note though, the Polachrome was 35mm, too small for use in a Camroc unfortunately.

What a lucrative partnership that could have been, between Polaroid and Estes...a purpose-designed Polachrome camera & carrier rocket could have been launched using the square, flat "slim-line" Estes launch controller (now just a relic) that used the flat "Pola-Pulse" battery that was used in the Polaroid film cartridges to power the Polaroid SX-70 cameras!

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NAR #54895 SR

I know that Tri-X Pan was still in the Navy Supply System in 1988. I loaded into the Topcon SLR to shoot photos through the attack (#1) periscope. The oservation (#2) scope was far more sophisticated and had color video capability and used an internal large format Hasselblad for stills. Loading the Hasselblad's magazine in the dark was a total....

wait for it.....


wait for it.....


wait for it.....


wait for it.....


hassle.

Thank you. I'll be here all week.

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And if the camera would have used a semi-circular film, the whole thing could have been called the Estes Hemiroid.

Where that came from, I'm not exactly sure

After reading this Wikipedia article (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_film ) on instant film, I'm not so sure that a Polaroid-type model rocket camera is purely academic. Fujifilm makes instant cameras and film, "The Impossible Project" in the Netherlands acquired Polaroid's manufacturing equipment and is developing a new line of improved instant film, and the "New55project" is developing new, very high quality instant films. Just as LP Records did not disappear but found niche markets, I think instant film and cameras will also find niche markets (single-use instant "box cameras" would be the most visible one).

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NAR #54895 SR

Another thing I just found here (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_camera ):

"Sales of chemical film by all makers have dropped by at least 25% per year in the first decade of the 21st century, and the decline is likely to accelerate. Fujifilm is now the only remaining supplier of instant film in the United States. However, in October 2009, Polaroid announced it would bring back its classic instant film cameras, after announcing the year before that production was to be stopped."

Given this information (plus Fujifilm, "The Impossible Project," and the "New55project" either producing instant films or developing [no pun intended] new instant films), maybe a "Polaroc" (Polaroid Camroc) isn't necessarily just an "alternative Estes history" idea?

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NAR #54895 SR

That's priceless... OL JR

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