Saturday, November 29, 2008

Nice POLAROID 195 LAND CAMERA Instant Film Tominon Lens

Nice POLAROID 195 LAND CAMERA Instant Film Tominon Lens - eBay (item 310104907088 end time Dec-04-08 18:25:13 PST)

This vintage Polaroid 195 land camera was produced between 1971 and 1974. It's a great camera with manual controls professional photographers dig. It belonged to a now-retired local optician who I suspect took excellent care of it. We removed the film pack that was in it with two shots left, so we could clean the rollers and show you the innards. I took scads of pictures to show you condition and features.

The outer cover is marked, "Polaroid 195." The dial on the back says, "Wind arrow to red dot, turn dial to desired time" and the settings are 0, 15, 30, 45, etc. to 120. An arrow above the dial points left and says, "Start." The outer cover can be completely removed or left hanging. A clip inside can hold finished photos.

The viewfinder and focus window flip up for use.The front of the camera itself is marked, "Polaroid 195 Land Camera." There's a selector lever with three settings: M, X, V.

The lens front is marked, "Tominon 1:3.8 f=114mm 209930 Tomioko Japan." The lens is marked, "Seiko" on one side with two sets of numbers: "64, 45, 32, 22, 16, 11, 8, 5.6, 3.8" on one adjustable ring; "B, 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500" on the other ring.

The red shutter button is marked, "2" and the white lever on the right is marked, "3." You can select distance from subject by pushing two sliding buttons with a scale on the top right marked, "Feet, 3.5, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 15, 25, Inf." There's a hot shoe for a flash, not included. Nor do we have the manual, but I see you can buy one from a fellow eBayer.

The bellows look very good, perhaps a bit dusty. There a spot of finish missing near one end of the rollers inside. The silver finish on the left has bubbles and pits. The shutter works very fast. The leather neck strap has a crimp where it might have been pinched in a door or suitcase closure. I included the used film pack because some people load one with fresh film manually. Do you?

We had a different Polaroid model ourselves and the white lever on the right locked when depressed and snapped up when you pressed the shutter. This one doesn't stay down. I don't know if that's correct for this model or if it needs repaired.

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