A decade ago, I stumbled upon a page where someone detailed their process for crafting their own instant film, something similar to Polaroid Type55 or the New55. At that time, the instructions seemed too complex for me to tackle, and I never ventured into the world of instant film creation.

Fast forward ten years, and I’m now prepared to give it a shot. The reason? There’s now a lot more information and instructions shared by others who have explored this fascinating process.

With that in mind, I decided to create a video and write an article to guide anyone interested in crafting their own instant film and taking the plunge into this venture. So, here’s your step-by-step guide on how to make your own instant fil

Monobath paste

a. Thickening Agent: Combine 5g of Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) powder with 100ml of water. Heat the water to approximately 70°C, then gradually add the CMC powder while stirring continuously. Keep stirring until you achieve a uniform, viscous paste. Cover the mixture and let it sit overnight or a few days to get rid of the air bubbles and to smoothen the paste.

b. 15% Sodium Hydroxide Solution: Mix 7.5 grams of sodium hydroxide in 50ml of water. Caution: Wear safety glasses and gloves as this mixture may splatter and generate heat. Let it dissolve and measure the pH. You may need add sodium hydroxide or water until you reach a pH level of 12

c. Monobath:

1. Combine 8ml of Kodak HC110 (using the newer, less viscous HC110).
2. Add 1ml of Ilford Rapid fixer.
3. Mix in 4ml of sodium hydroxide from step (b)
4. Add 0.5 grams of sodium sulfate.
5. Next, add 10ml of the thickening agent prepared in step (a) to this mixture. Stir and blend thoroughly. The pH of this solution should be around pH 9. Cover it and let it sit for a few hours or even a day until the paste becomes smooth and well-incorporated.

2 Creating the Pod

a. Cutting the Freezer Paper: Take a piece of freezer paper measuring 12×7 cm. Fold it in half along the long side, with the plastic layer on the inside.

b. Sealing the Long Side: Seal the long side using an appropriate heat sealer. I used setting no 3.5. The goal is to create a strong seal that won’t leak but is still weak enough for the rollers of the Polaroid 545=to break.

c. Dividing the Pod: Increase the heat sealer setting (to 4.5 in my case) and seal along the center of the short side. This effectively divides the pod into two pockets.

d. Filling the Pod: Use a syringe to inject 1ml of the viscous monobath into one pocket and seal the short ends. Repeat the process for the other pocket. Both seals should be sealed using the higher setting.

3 Receiver Positive Sheet:

a. Preparing the Sheet: Take expired Ilford RC 5×7 paper and fix it in rapid fixer (1+9) for 2 minutes without exposing it. Wash and dry it, then cut it to a width of 4 inches, leaving the length uncut.

b.Creating Space: Apply two narrow strips of masking tape along the two long sides. This creates a gap between the sheet and the negative, allowing a layer of monobath paste to be spread between the two surfaces.

5 Using Foma RC Paper as the Photo Negative:

Preparing the Negative:
i. Cut the Foma RC paper down to 4×5 size and load it into the 4×5 film folder.
ii. Use a 4×5 large format camera to expose this photo paper negative (ISO 6).
iii. Since photo paper is used as the negative, final assembly can be done under red safe light conditions. If film is used as the negative, it must be assembled in total darkness.
iv. Place the exposed photo paper negative (emulsion facing down) on top of the positive paper at the pod to make it stick to the double-sided tape

5 Assembling the Pod:

Creating a Rig: To simplify the assembly process, create a rig to help in aligning the pieces

i. Place the fixed photo paper with the emulsion side facing up.
ii. Securely tape the pod onto this paper.
iii. Apply a piece of narrow double-sided tape on the top side of the pod. This will allow you to attach the negative sheet on top of the pod, ensuring alignment between the negative and positive sheets.

6 Processing:

i. Use a piece of black paper to craft a black envelope that encloses the assembly. ( I used white paper in the video demo)

ii. Load the entire assembly into the Polaroid 545 holder and slowly and firmly pull it through the rollers.
iii. If all goes well, the pod will break and spread the monobath paste between the negative and positive sheets.
iv. After 5 minutes, remove it from the black envelope and carefully peel it apart to reveal a positive image and a negative.


v. Finally, fix the negative paper with some rapid fixer to stabilize it. For the positive sheet, a simple wash with water to remove the paste.

7 Conclusion

This isn’t instant film in the commerical product sense since you need to shoot the negative separately and manually assemble it in the dark. However, this concept provides insight into how diffusion transfer reversal works, opening the door for further experimentation. For now, I’ll conclude here, but if I explore different papers or develop a more ready-to-shoot package like Polaroid Type 555 or New 55, I’ll provide updates.

If you have been reading my blog or watching my YouTube channel you would know that I do mainly large format photography. I often take my own self portrait for using my pneumatic cable release that has a long cable and air bulb release.

However I have always been thinking on how to make a more modern kind of remote cable release and hence this project.

Research

I search the internet for ideas on how other have make their own cable release and see what are the different components they have used. Primarily they will make use of

1. a microcontroller
2. a linear actuator that will press the traditional cable release
3. a trigger device to send signal to the microcontroller

So I decide to add my own flavor to my own remote cable release.

For the microcontroller I decided to use a Esp32 microcontroller development board. The ESP32 chip has been popular with iOT devices. It has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities. However for this project I will use the Bluetooth function to do the communication.

For the linear actuator I found a 3D design on the Internet you may use of a small Servo motor (SG90 mini servo motor) and a 3D printed rack and pinion.  The linear rack will push a plunger of the mechanical cable release which in turn will trip the shutter on the lens/camera.

For the project case I modified it out of a project case template that I downloaded from this Andreas Spiess channel. I customize it to my needs : mainly to make some holes for the cable release , USB port of the ESP32 board, the mounting holes for the servo motor and the esp32 board. Both STL files are available on my github .

Design

So here is the simple electronic design diagram of my remote cable release.

The connections are quite simple, we have the battery power
(4x AA batteries) to power both the servo motor and the esp32 board. A power switch will be used to turn on and off the circuit. The circuit should be off when not in use as the servo motor will also draw current when not moving.

The servo motor signal will be coming from a GPIO ouput pin from the esp32 board. The signal will have the motor rotate by a certain angle and in which direction. This will be translated into a linear movement using the rack and pinion.

Assembly

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Once the parts are gathered, soldered and 3D printed, they are assembled together. The mechanical cable release is inserted into the case first otherwise it will be blocked by the other parts.

I designed an mobile app that uses Bluetooth to communicate with the main unit. On the mobile app, there are four functions

1. On mode – immediate trigger of the cable release (shutter speed set on lens/camera)
2. Timer 10 secs Delay mode , the shutter will be trigger after 10 secs. This is best for self portrait shots.
3. Manual Bulb mode – at the first press, the shutter will be triggered and release at the second press (shutter speed set to B mode)
4. Time Bulb mode – set the duration in seconds and when the button is pressed, the shutter will be automatically triggered and released at the end of the time. (shutter speed set to B mode)
   
   

Coding

I use the Arduino platform to create the esp32 program and the MIT App Inventor to create the mobile app. As I am no professional programmer, I’m sure that they are a lot of improvements that can be made. I will share both codes on my github as open source for anyone who is interested to use or improve .

Conclusion

This is an interesting project that that allows me to develop my electronics and coding skills. There is a few issues that can be further improved on :

1. make the unit even smaller
2. have a way to mount this on a camera hotshoe/cold shoe
3. a stronger servo motor
4. a better rechargeable battery source
5. a digital output to trigger some digital cameras

In one of my recent videos I share how I shot with the 4×5 instant back (Lomograflok ) from Lomography. In that video I shot with my Chamonix 4×5 camera and I mentioned that we need to use a spacer every time we compose a shot.

That is to take into account of the different film plane on this back. The Instax Wide film plane is further away by 19.4mm from the usual sheet film plane. Another point I mentioned is that if I were to mount this back on the camera, I would need to remove the ground glass frame. The Chamonix ground glass frame is easy to put back ( one hand to slide the frame in)but difficult to remove ( you need 2 hands to lift out the 2 spring arms) and that is kind of troublesome if you have to do that for every shot.

So I decided to 3D printed a ground glass frame that already has the spacer built in and it’s also much easier to remove and put back. The new ground glass frame that I 3D printed is very similar in size to the spacer that came with the back. The only difference is the height which is about four mm higher to take into into account where the ground glass should be. The other thing I added was the grooves along the long sides so that it can be locked down. In contrast, there is no groove on the original spacer because will be held in place when you insert it into the groundglass frame

The 3D design is done in Fusion 360, nothing too complicated as the shape is quite regular. It is a matter of measuring the original spacer and transferring the measurements into the design. One of the thing is I nearly missed out are the 2 raised bars on the right side of the frame. These are used to align the entire frame on the camera back to prevent it from being inserted too much or too little.

I 3D printed it using my Anycubic Mega S printer with the following specs (for reference):

Layer : 0.3mm
Infill density : 20%
Extruder temp : 230C
Support : Everywhere
Time Taken : 5hrs

The STL files can be downloaded here ( DO note this is a Work in Progress project)

Ground Glass

Instead of making my own ground glass, I opted for a piece of 3mm acrylic that is frosted on one side. I have a piece lying around from my Afghan Box cameras build so I decided to use it. There are also four corners that I used to hold the ground glass in place. The 2 bottom pieces are glued to the main body using superglue while the other 2 are secured with screws. This will make it easier to swap ground glass in the future by unscrewing the top 2 pieces.

Test shoot

So what was left is to do a test shoot to make sure the ground glass image plane is the same as the Instax Wide back film plane. I chose a still life setup and focused on the label on the orange. The results shown the there is no shift in focus switching from ground glass to instant back.

Improvements

The radial locks to catch the groove are not well aligned. Although the 3D frame is still held in place, it is something to look into.

Conclusion

While the 3D printed back is not perfect, it certainly make using the instant back easily with my Chamonix camera. Other 4×5 cameras may not require this if the back can be slotted under the ground glass.