Instax Film Adapter for Vintage Kodak Instant Cameras 

Aww

🤞🤞

Thanks! :)

Yeah, it's a cool camera for sure

The new brains microcontroller sounds like an incredible add on too. Maybe a pico can handle it? Cheap cheap cheap.

@@AndyTanguay Definitely it could. I've got some Arduino pro micros lying around so I might just use those, although maybe pi picos are a better choice... 🤔

Awesome! :)

Thanks!!

Be careful! I've broken a few of those... Good luck!

Amazing! Let me know how it goes. Good luck!!

Yeah it's a really fun camera. I uploaded my ek4 picker arm design to Thingiverse, so maybe someone can come up with a more reliable design. I also haven't given up on it quite yet! 🤞

OK it's printed and my springs have arrived. Time to assemble

Interesting idea! Possibly! The rollers have a grippy texture on them because they need to pull the photo through, but it's worth a shot!

@@JoshGladstone That's nothing a little diluted coke on a brush can't fix! Plus if you only put the tape on one roller it should still pull it through I would think.

Thanks! I'm not planning on selling any just because I wouldn't really want to take money for something that I can't really guarantee will work 100% consistently and won't damage people's cameras and stuff. There's a bit of DIY jankiness involved. But that said, since you're a Kodaky person, and it would be kinda cool to know someone in Rochester was using it, feel free to DM me on Instagram and maybe we can figure something out.

I'm not really planning on selling them mostly because I wouldn't really want to take money for something that I can't really guarantee will work 100% consistently and won't damage people's cameras and stuff. There's a bit of DIY jankiness involved. That said, there are 3d printing services out there. I can't speak to how much they might cost or even if they would necessarily work with this project, but that could be an option.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah it wasn't easy and I went through a lot of film and broke a couple cameras in the process, but I've used it on two or three cameras and it's worked fairly reliably so I figured it's good enough to release. I'll have to look up your gears on thingiverse, I've broken a couple of those cameras too! 😬

@JoshGladstone it appers as Gear for a kodamatic 960 instant camera cant share the link yt is problematic with links , also to me the ek4 and the kodamatics 960 were the models i like the best , also had good luck with "the handle" and party flash model

I may just share my file as iss aswell maybe someone with more interested can pick both of our desing and made one even better or improved on one them

Bambu Lab has really come along in the past few years and really gained a lot of trust for their reliability and quality at reasonable prices. I don't know many people who are unhappy with theirs. So I'd look at the A1 and A1 mini. Also not sponsored or anything, I'm just happy with mine it works great.

3d printers have been getting cheaper and better lately, but it's also a whole thing to get into so it's definitely not for everyone. Many of cities also have makerspaces or libraries that have 3d printing facilities for public use. But again, not necessarily everybody's cup of tea.

@@JoshGladstone I would rather buy one already made. Easier for me.

I’m in the process of moving into a new house right now, so I can’t do anything, but I almost want to contact OP and work out a licensing thing, just to crank a few hundred of these out and sell them. I’ve been in the position of not having a 3D printer and seeing things I REALLY wanted. Living in the middle of nowhere, nearest maker space to me being like 16 hours away. Hate that shit, work out something with SOMEONE, they print and sell, you get a 20% passive kickback for being the designer, they deal with printing and shipping and all that shit, and get 80%. That’s what I’d do, anyway. Or, if nobody’s doing this in a few months when I’m all settled in, I might just send you a DM.

I don't think so, Instax Wide is 4.25" wide, and Kodak Instant film was 4", so Instax Wide won't fit in the camera

Good question! I'm not sure. I know the Kodak Instant and Fotorama formats are extremely similar, but I'm not sure if they are 100% compatible, and also I'm not sure how robust the Fotorama internal mechanisms are. So it might be possible to use this or alter it to work with Fotorama cameras, but unfortunately I don't own any so I can't say for sure. And I wouldn't really recommend trying unless you're willing to break a camera or two.

may i ask which springs exactly did you use?

I believe the EK2 is the same as The Handle, so yes it should work

@@JoshGladstone Hi, Yes this is true. The EK2 is the handle. Thank you for this.

No, unfortunately the ek4 has a different picker arm mechanism, so it needs a slightly different adapter, and I haven't been able to design one that works reliably enough. Yet.

@@JoshGladstone can you share your ek-4 design even though it may be a Work in progress? Maybe I can help you improving the design, I have a 3d printer an 3d design skills

@@VirtualTechie Sure. I've added the EK-4 picker arm file to the thingiverse link. Good luck! Be careful!

@@JoshGladstone legend!

They tried! Look up "Polavision" on Wikipeida

@@JoshGladstone ok thanks.. 😊

@@FrankAndPhotoTutorialsFilm speed. The Pleaser II expects ISO 320 film, while the other Handle cameras expect ISO 160 film.

For the main spring in the adapter, I used a .6 x 7 x 20mm 10 lap spring that was then stretched to be about 35 or 40mm. For the spring back plate adapter, I used a .6 x 7 x 10mm 6 lap spring. There's a link in the description to the exact set of springs I used.

Instax Wide is just a little bit too wide to fit in the camera, unfortunately.

There are 3d printing services out there. I can't speak to how much they might cost or even if they would necessarily work with this project, but that could be an option.

@@JoshGladstone I'll attempt to check that out, but I would be willing to pay up to about $150 for an official one. This would be a dream of mine. I love Instax Square and I want to pick up a Kodak Pleaser II. I'm assuming Wide was too wide?

Oo! I don't know anyone who was actually a user so your perspective is very interesting! The trimprint feature seems like it was really cool too and isn't anything I've ever seen from Polaroid or Fuji either

@@JoshGladstone Even back then, there were few of us shooting Kodak instant compared to Polaroid, but we made up for our smaller numbers with our love of the Kodak instant prints. I remember when Polaroid was demanding we hand-in our Kodak cameras. There was a store credit/partial refund in place or something like that. I returned mine because the film was no longer available, but plenty of people refused to. Stores were ordered to destroy existing stocks of the film so it very quickly disappeared. Polaroid really were A h*les about how they did things. A good company would have used the opportunity to improve their product so it was as good as the Kodak one, but no, they just kept on making the same second rate consumer film as they always had. I should note that pro-Polaroid was much better. I loved their 4x5 and 8x10 color film, and enjoyed using PolaChrome 35mm slide film, but I refused to use SX-70 film after they screwed my Kodak instant. I was quite pleased when Polaroid eventually went bankrupt, despite some of the good things the company did in its earlier years. The company was never the same after Dr Land left the company in 1982 over the failed PolaVision products, and we have to believe that he might have been more sensible about Kodak after Polaroid won, compared to the corporate bean counters that ran the corporation into the ground after Land left. It was all very unjust. The two patents that Kodak infringed were found to be invalid, and the one patent Polaroid sued over that was valid, Kodak was found to have not infringed. However, in the years when Kodak was trying to develop their process, the engineers couldn't figure out a way to avoid that patent, so an executive wrote a memo saying basically "go ahead and infringe and let them sue us." The engineers, however, eventually did work out how to avoid infringing that patent, and the product reached the market with no actionable patent infringements. However that memo was discovered by Polaroid, and they used it to suggest that Kodak intended to infringe, and that technicality won them the case. They should never have won it, and it was a big surprise for everyone. How could a memo trump the fact that the patent was not infringed in the cameras that were sold? It was unforgivable when they immediately started destroying Kodak cameras and film. The 1 billion dollars that Kodak was ordered to pay wasn't enough for them. They had to try to take our cameras off us. They wiped out decades of goodwill toward the company in that brutal act. There was a lot of anger at the time.