The easy way to use Instax film in a Polaroid camera!

Polastax Instax Wide Film holders let you shoot Instax Wide film in Polaroid pack film cameras. Tired of fixed focus Fujifilm cameras? Craving some instant bokeh in your Instax shots? Our refurbished, Polastax converted Polaroid Land Cameras come with glass (not plastic!) lenses, manual focus, and adjusted light meters that remove the guesswork from properly exposing Instax film in a vintage camera.

Unleash your creative potential with Polastax.

A Polastax converted Polaroid pack film camera doesn’t develop Instax film. What it will do is allow you to easily add creative effects like masks and filters and double exposures to your Instax photographs. By keeping the developing separate, you get creative opportunities that simply aren’t available with Fujifilm’s cameras or a full Polaroid / Instax conversion.

How it works: load, shoot, develop.

Polastax Instax Wide film holders have a flexible, lightproof dark slide that rolls from the front of the holder to the back. Film is loaded into the holder in either a changing bag or a darkroom (a bathroom without windows will work if you don’t have a changing bag or a darkroom). After you’ve rolled the dark slide into place and fastened the safety cap to the open end of the holder, you’re ready to shoot.

Place the holder in the film compartment of the camera, unroll the dark slide until the slide grip is hidden under the lip of the compartment, close the back of the camera, and take your picture. When you’re ready for your next shot, open the back, roll the dark slide to the right with your thumb, and set the exposure indicator to white so you know the holder contains an exposed sheet of film. Remove the holder from the camera: your film is ready to be developed!

Unloading and developing your Instax film is just as easy. In a darkroom or changing bag, remove the safety cap, fully retract the dark slide, and slide the sheet of film out of the holder. Put this piece of film in an empty Instax Wide film cartridge, slap that cartridge into your Instax developer, and push the developer’s shutter button. (Alternatively, you can develop Instax Wide film manually with a Polaroid 545i holder and a 4×5 dark slide, which we also sell.)

The Polastax conversion process.

To convert a Polaroid pack film camera to the Polastax format, we remove the film transport mechanism from the film compartment and lightproof the camera’s steel rollers. Once converted, a Polaroid pack film camera will not work with Polaroid pack film, but since pack film hasn’t been commercially available for decades, this has virtually no effect on the useability of the camera.

Because Polaroid pack film cameras were designed to use 3000 ISO and 75 ISO Polaroid pack film, our Polastax converted Polaroid Land Cameras offer two types of exposure compensation to guarantee proper exposure of 800 ISO Instax film: a light reducing meter cap for the 3000 ISO setting and a slip on ND filter holder for the 75 ISO setting.

Every refurbished, Polastax converted Polaroid Land Camera is shutter tested. During testing, an effort is also made to recalibrate the light meter; if the meter can’t be recalibrated, we identify the ideal Lighten / Darken setting for the perfect Instax exposure on each and every camera.

Creative effects: double exposures, masks, and filters.

How easy is it to take a double (or triple!) exposure with a Polastax converted Polaroid Land Camera? With your Polastax Instax Wide film holder loaded in the camera, you cock the shutter, take a picture, cock the shutter again, and take another picture. That’s it!

It’s just as easy to use masks and transparency filters in our Polastax converted Polaroid Land Cameras. You can use masks or filters individually in our mask trays or filter trays or combine masks with filters in our mask and filter trays. All of these trays fit snugly in the film compartment of a Polastax converted camera underneath your Polastax Instax Wide film holder (trays work best with cameras like the Polaroid 250, which don’t have an electric timer built into the camera).

With PolaStax, you can use Instax Wide in medium format and large format cameras.

Unlike camera specific hacks and conversions, the PolaStax Instax Wide film holder will work with any film back designed to use Polaroid pack film. That means you can shoot Instax Wide in your Mamiya or Hasselblad or your large format 4×5 film camera. All you need is the PolaStax film holder, the appropriate pack film back (for 4×5, the Polaroid 405) and our Alternate Safety Cap.

Check out this blog post for more info!