25 Jun
2012
25 Jun
'12
4:39 p.m.
On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 4:04 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I might be able to help, though. I have a
'Polaroid Videopritner 4', for
all Polaroid assured me they had never made such a beast... This is
similar, but lower-reulotuon device, it displys TV-rate video on an
internal CRT and photographs it.
There's a colour fitler wheel (red, green, blue and a hole) so it cna
print a colour inamge in 3 goes.
I have a similar device - two actually. The first one I got for free
or nearly free, with a Polaroid camera, and no control panel. The
second cost under $100 and had the control panel and a 35mm camera, so
between the two, I have one useful unit. The Polaroid film in
question was sold for medical uses, so was quite expensive even 20
years ago when one could buy it off the shelf ($50-$70 per cassette, I
was told).
Like your "Videoprinter 4", mine has a mono CRT and a color wheel.
AFAIK, it does *4* exposures - R, G, B, and "contrast" (no filter).
It takes in an EGA signal or NTSC video, and has onboard memory for
frame capture of live video. I've done some sample image grabbing
from a movie on laserdisc, and for practical uses, I
use to make title
slides with it, back when we used 35mm slide projectors for
presentations (I produced the slide content on an Amiga since that was
the easiest thing to use that I had on hand). Back when slide houses
charged several dollars each for presentation graphics, this was a
moderate-quality way of doing my own interstitials for slide shows for
the cost of one roll of ordinary 35mm slide film ($4-$5 for a roll of
Fuji E-6 ASA 100 film, $7-$8 for processing and mounting).
I haven't used it in years, but it was great 15+ years ago when I first got it.
-ethan
26 Jun
26 Jun
3:43 p.m.
On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 4:04 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I would have thoguth the second one, as is, sounds more useful. 35mm film
is still very easy to get.
I might be able to help, though. I have a
'Polaroid Videopritner 4', for
all Polaroid assured me they had never made such a beast... This is
similar, but lower-reulotuon device, it displys TV-rate video on an
internal CRT and photographs it.
There's a colour fitler wheel (red, green, blue and a hole) so it cna
print a colour inamge in 3 goes.
I have a similar device - two actually. The first one I got for free
or nearly free, with a Polaroid camera, and no control panel. The
second cost under $100 and had the control panel and a 35mm camera, so
between the two, I have one useful unit. The Polaroid film in question was sold for medical uses, so was quite
expensive even 20
years ago when one could buy it off the shelf ($50-$70 per cassette, I
was told).
That I can ewell believe. Now, of course, it;s no longer made AFAIK and
you have ot hope a pack turns up somewhere...
Like your "Videoprinter 4", mine has a mono CRT and a color wheel.
AFAIK, it does *4* exposures - R, G, B, and "contrast" (no filter).
It takes in an EGA signal or NTSC video, and has onboard memory for
frame capture of live video. I've done some sample image grabbing
AFAIK mine only does NTSC-rate video (OK, for the pedants, RS170 rate
video), there is certainly no itnernal framestore. It's been a long time
since I've been inside, and I don;t think I've had it working yet, but
from what I remembr there was what looked to be a
convetnional monochrome
monitor PCB in there linked to a CRT. Like your unit
there's a disk with
4 filters (one clear, maybe just a hole) and a stepper motor to move
them. There is some kind of control board, I seem to remember it's
microprocessor based,. maybe even an 8080. And not much more. I don;t
rememebr there being an internal NTSC or PAL colour decoder.
Is the 35mm camera in your unit a standard camwera body? If so, what?
Mine came wit hthe official SX70 camera. This fits on the front of the
unit, and is held on by 2 captive thunmbscrwes. There's a DE9 conneccto
too, there's a plug wired to 2 pins of this which plugs into the Polaroid
back, shorting thos pins causes the back to eject the current print and
start developing i nthe nromal way. It uses the battery in the filmpack
to power this. As I mentioned, the optics is a standard, and not very
good (Soligor, I think) enlarger lese. It's essentially fixed focus (well
evetyhing is at a fixed distance, so that's OK), it's fitted to a meatl
tuve which slites into the camera body and is lcoked by a setscrew.
Presumably you can focus it if necessary when you repari the unit.
I also got what looks ot be a home-made bracket with it. 'Home made'
meaning not a Polaroid product, I suecpt it was made in the workshops of
the university I got this thing from. This fits in place of the Polaroid
camera. It looks like it would have held a35mm SLR + motordrive, again
there's a DE9 plug that conencts to th Videoprinter, it's wired ot a
strange 3 pin socet about 7mm in diamater. The outer shell of this might
be missing. It looks a bit like a Lemo connector, but it isn't, if you
see what I eman. I've not identified what camera/motordrive that would
conenctor to.
-tony
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