She’s simply irresistible. That’s the right word for her I’d say. She’s pretty big and made of plastic mostly. like any other Polaroid cameras. I actually never had a chance to take her for a walk since I first got her. The electricity just won’t work, and I’m not that good with that solder iron thing, but I’ll try it soon. All I know is the cable that connects the power from the battery was so brittle and a few of them were broken, and the circuit board is, I don’t know, maybe is broken too.
She’s so easy to use, easy to focus. just like using a rangefinder. Just aim, focus and click! There 2 selections of film speed in the front panel, 100 or 3000. The lighten and darken dial is also there, and that’s about it. Loading and developing the film is the same as other film pack cameras.
I got her when I was in Bandung. Around 2006. A friend of mine gave me his number, then I met this guy, he fixes Polaroid cameras. Back then he was a Polaroid photographer for weddings, graduation day, etc. From the way he speaks, gestures and all, I can tell that he’s very polite. We talked much about Polaroids while I gave him my broken Polaroid camera. Then the next few weeks, we met again and he offered me a few of his cameras. He told me that he’d better gave them to me rather than keeping them in the storage room. She came along with a few others that day. You can imagine how happy I was that day. It’s a good thing I drive a car, otherwise it’ll be difficult for me to bring them home.
I cleaned her up, and everything. Then I found an instruction of how to convert the batteries, then i found out that the camera isn’t working. There. Up ‘till now I kept her stored in a safe place in my room, waiting for my mood to get back to her to fix her and finally taking her for a walk. Here are a few picture samples from another friend of mine. He didn’t use a Polaroid 420, he used a Polaroid 104 automatic land camera (well mostly it’s the same camera, just a different number type and a few details) with an ID-UV film pack.
