On to the Diana F Instant Back

Last night Romain and I celebrated Happy Non-Valentines Day.
He prepared an amazing dinner with a sort of root vegetable cut into diamond shapes and cooked in butter, along with a fish and ham dish. (Who knew these two meats would be so delicious together?! Oh, that's right.. The French.) I have no idea what the root vegetable is called, but it's similar to potatoes and looks a bit like carrots.
Note to self: Ask Romain.
Then to top it off, he surprised me with a present. The Diana F Instant Back with two rolls of film. (Clearly I have the best boyfriend ever.) Not only can I shoot 120 mm film and 34mm film with my Diana but now I can do the Instax Mini Film too! (For those of you who don't know, this is similar to Polaroid film.)
So this morning I went and bought the needed 2 CR2 batteries and began the experimentation. Photo One and Two turned out black. After figuring out what I was doing wrong, photo three turned out but with an unwanted circle frame. Which means I must have put in the adaptor piece backwards. Leave it to me to do something of the sort... But I was happy to see an image magically appear after taking it anyway. Unfortunately I can't take the film out to fix the lens adaptor until all 10 pictures have been taken... Thus, the remaining photos will all have that circle frame, cropping out half of the photo.  However, this just means that I can practice on figuring out the right developing method. I took a picture of each of the kids and it was funny to see their reactions. In this digital era, the kids had no idea what Polaroid film was. After taking their pictures and seeing the film come out the side of the camera, they all wanted to know what it was.
"It's the picture I just took of you."
"But it's white."
"That's because it needs a few minutes to develop."
Which only amazed them as they watched the image slowly appear. Afterwards they kept asking if they could see their picture again. Even Alex, the 13 year old who's main interest lies in Star Wars, was intrigued by my camera and was asking me all sorts of questions. It's great to be able to introduce them to something that they've never seen before. Something for me that brings back such euphoric childhood memories. Grandma Cook would get out her old Polaroid and take pictures of us grand kids. The gratification of instant film.  Good times.

And because I'm a strong believer in no film being wasted, I did a little project with the kids photos. I painted a small canvas and used acrylic paste to attach the photos to the canvas. Et voila! The perfect Valentines gift for the family!
Hope everyone has an amazing Valentine's Day!
xoxo