Why I’m loving the Polaroid SX-70 film

Over the past year I have been mainly using the Polaroid 600 film with my SX-70 Alpha 1 polaroid camera.

My camera hasn’t been converted to use 600 film so instead I either use ND filters that you place on the film cartridge before inserting it into the camera or I use the Mint 2 flash.

The main reason I had got into the habit of using the 600 film was that I liked the different border editions that Polaroid have released instead of just the plain white frames.

Recently I was getting a bit fed up with the fact that Polaroid hadn’t recently released that many fun version frames for the 600 film and I was constantly using expired film which was having mixed results.

I realised I could no longer keep wasting money with the expired film hoping that the battery still worked or that the picture quality would be ok so I decided to go back to basics and just purchase a recent batch of Polaroid SX-70 film.

I knew this is the perfect time of year to use the SX-70 film in the bright and sunny weather without needing the flash since it has a low ISO.

As soon as that first instant photo came out on the SX-70 film I was instantly in love with it!

I just loved the dark depths of the photos and colours it was producing. I had been used to using the Polaroid 600 film for such a long time that I forgot just how washed out the colours are on that film.

For comparison, here is one I took of my cat in the garden using the Polaroid 600 film with the coloured frame edition:

This film had expired and you’ll see the colours are quite light and washed out with some chemical forming imperfections in some places.

This was the last photo taken on that batch and I instantly put the SX-70 film straight into my camera afterwards and took the following photo of my cat in the garden:

You can instantly see the difference in colour quality and I was really impressed by this film.

Here are some photos I took whilst on my boat on a sunny day. The first one is of me attempting a selfie on my camera:

This is pretty out of focus since I took it myself. The next two are of my dog, Daisy, chilling out on the boat:

I really do love the blues and golden colours this film produces.

Here are a couple of photos I took on a recent beach walk:

Even though the above two photos are lighter, I still really like the colours in them.

Here is a photo of my husband and mother in law taken at the weekend on our first social distance dinner out since lockdown at a Greek restaurant at Brighton Marina:

Here is a photo I took of a really cool leather bag by AVO Bags that my friend Alice makes and sells in Brighton:

The bags she makes are inspired from the 60s/70s era and I feel this photo gives a really nice vintage feel to the look of the bag that I really like.

Lastly, here are a couple of photos I took of my other cat in the garden:

I am really impressed with the depth of the green colour in the last two photos.

Whilst I wish that Polaroid would make some exciting coloured frames for this film type, the photo quality and colours has made me over look this issue and keep purchasing it for now.

Instead, I am using my typewriter to write captions on the photos after I have scanned them then I stick them in my photo album.