Why does my Mamiya 645 Polaroid back only expose a small image area?
Asked 3/13/2018
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I'm using a Mamiya 645AF with the HP402 Polaroid Land Pack Film Holder and Fuji FP-100C pack film. The resulting image only fills a small central area of the Polaroid sheet, leaving a lot of unused space around it. Why does this happen, and is there any way to get a larger image while still using this Mamiya 645 body?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
8y ago
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The Mamiya 645 is incapable of producing images bigger than 645 format allows (nominally 6x4.5 cm, actually 56 × 41.5 mm). This is the size of the little opening in your Mamiya Polaroid back.
A question remains: what use is then the Polaroid back, when it produces such tiny images (they are not much smaller than wildly successful Instax Mini, at 62 × 46 mm, but let that rest)?
And the answer to this is that in the days of yore the Polaroids were not used as an end product, but as a sort of "live view" - a final check of the composition and lighting before a shot was taken on film.
For this purpose Polaroid backs were produced for all major camera makes using common 4 × 5" size Polaroid film, most of which was wasted.
To make use of entire Polaroid film you would need a proper 4 × 5" camera and a relevant back.
Originally by user62463. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user62463
8y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
This is normal. Your Mamiya 645 projects an image only as large as the 645 film format allows: about 56 × 41.5 mm. The Polaroid back sits at the camera’s normal film plane, so it can only record the same image size the camera was designed to produce.
Pack film such as FP-100C has a much larger image area than 645, so most of the sheet remains unused. These backs were mainly intended as proofing tools—essentially a pre-digital way to check composition and lighting before shooting the final image on regular film.
If you want the image to fill more of the Polaroid sheet, you would need a camera with a larger image format, such as a 4×5 camera or another camera designed to cover a larger film area. There isn’t a way to make the Mamiya 645AF produce a larger image circle just by changing backs.
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