As summer turned to autumn, last week I went on a bit of a spring clean. I went through some old “photography boxes” and found quite a few things to throw away or sell but I did find one thing I had completely forgotten about: a Polaroid SLR670-S.

I had always been interested in instant photography, but as a child, the cost was too prohibitive (arguably it still is now). Over a decade ago I thought I’d give it a go and bought this camera, but not long afterwards my apartment in Paris was burgled and I gave up photography for a few years. Shame they stole my valuables instead of raiding the fridge. I was 20kg heavier back then.

Back to 2026. Since finding the camera, I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos, especially “In An Instant” (hence the title of this article) and it got me excited to give it a go again. The timing was good. While I’m very restricted in what I can shoot at the moment (parenting responsibilities limiting my time to just Arsenal), it’s good to add something new into the mix.

I should really speak about the cost of the film packs. The Polaroid packs have 8 shots and come in a few flavours, mainly with and without batteries. Older cameras, such as mine, need a battery in the film pack to power it, hence increasing film costs, while the newer rechargeable cameras do not. Battery-powered film works out at around £2-£2.40 per shot, while the battery-less film is around £1.90-£2.10 per shot, depending on how many you buy. This is around twice the price of Instax, which is approx. £1 per shot.

So I ordered 3x colour and 3x B&W packs to get going. Being quite impatient, I impulse bought a single pack for £25 from a Snappy Snaps (that’s £3.13 per shot!!) so I could give it a go this weekend. I took it along to the Arsenal game with me, still primarily shooting with my Ricoh GRIV, but I stopped a few times to take some Polaroid photos.

*A shot with my 28mm equiv. Ricoh GRIV (digital) for comparison purposes for a shot further down.*

A few initial thoughts

Opening the camera feels robust enough but still worries me slightly
The camera is an SLR and it’s lovely to look through to focus and compose. Maybe a little challenging being razor accurate with the focusing but that’s not really the point
The camera has a funny aperture system. From what I can ascertain, the aperture and shutter values are coupled. Very weird. The Time Machine accessory fixes the aperture to f/8 and allows you to select a shutter speed, up to 1/2000 second
To set the shutter speed, I used a light meter app, locking in f/8 and 640 ISO and took the reading. If it’s bright and sunny, this can require a shutter speed of over 1/2,000 second, which is faster than this camera can go, so something I’ll need to consider in the future (ND? Slower film?)
The Polaroid film is effectively something like medium format, so its 116mm & f/8 lens is a full frame equivalent of something like 45mm & f/3.2. Not exactly tele but certainly tighter than my usual 28/35mm, which added to the novelty
From some research, you don’t shake it like a Polaroid picture. Instead you put it into darkness as soon as physically possible
Instax film is certainly more true to life, cheaper and less volatile than Polaroid, but it’s the Polaroid’s imperfections that I find most interesting. The least digital.

Now that’s all said, here are all 8 photos, ‘scanned’ with my iPhone and Polaroid app.

My first shot, completely blown out. Good start! It was the only photo of the 8 I shot in auto exposure so either something is wrong with it or I had my finger blocking the exposure window. Could well be the latter, will have to test it again next time.

Here the two small figures against the giant letters caught my eye. I used an iPhone light meter app to set the shutter speed and it seemed to come out ok, perhaps a bit dark. Tough to tell at the time as it takes over 15 mins to fully develop, although after a couple of minutes you can get the gist from a quick peek.

Here I tested a high contrast shot. The dynamic range of Polaroid film (at least this modern version of it) is low, and that is very much the case here. In this shot you can only really see the area I exposed for, but all the people walking up the stairs to the ground have disappeared into the black. With instant, it’s not like you can scan negatives to bring out the shadows, so just something to bear in mind.

I like this shot. The embrace and the sunglasses. The retro look of the supporters’ club shop and bunting juxtaposed with London brickwork is further amplified by this film stock. Again a bit dark and the colour is a little too warm but overall I quite like it.

The fish and chip shop, an area I frequent on my Arsenal project as I still don’t have “the shot” I’m after. Here the meter was telling me to shoot 1/2000 second, which seemed a bit much, so I input 1/1000 second and I think it’s come out about right. Still not ‘the one’ I’m after but I quite like it.

Now inside the stadium. Having noticed the previous shots seemed a bit dark (it was about 45 mins since the previous photo was taken), I leaned into overexposing a bit and clearly I leaned too hard.

A better exposed photo of the pitch with some detail in the foreground. Which do you prefer between this and the earlier digital shot? Same seat but very different feel to the photos.

A final shot of people leaving the stadium in the sunlight. After 7 shots, I’m not exactly quick at using the camera yet and with all the movement I didn’t get the shot I was after, but some promise there.

I’ve definitely enjoyed using this camera and it’s a nice thing to have in the camera bag to mix things up. I’m not sure I’ll be bringing it to the Arsenal games, as having the extra distraction of another camera isn’t ideal when time is short. But I think for some other projects or just to get the creative juices flowing, it could be just the thing. Next things to try will be to see if I can get auto exposure to work, a portrait, a shot with flash (I have the first version of the new flash bar) and to use black and white film.

It’s also nice to have something that is a ‘one of one’, an unedited image, a contrast to an increasingly AI-generated world.

In an instant

Champions Zine: Editing and Sequencing