20 Most Recent Polaroid One600 Pro Instant Camera Questions & Answers

600 series.

http://www.butkus.org/chinon/polaroid.htm

The battery is in the film package.

The battery built into the long-expired film has run flat. The only fix is to insert fresh film, Polaroid don't majke it any more, but The Impossible Project make compatible film with just 8 exposures instead of 10 per pack.

Polaroid 600 film cameras only have a single battery, built into the film packs. To remove the film pack, open the door on the door and grip the sides of the pack and slide it out.

The battery is an integral part of the film pack. When you put a fresh pack in, you get a fresh battery. A dead battery means the rest of the photo pack is unusable.

Original photo packs are no longer manufactured and all remaining unused Polaroid stock will be long out of date with flat batteries and stale chemicals. If kept stored cold, the chemicals may be fresh but the batteries will be flat as cold kills batteries even faster. Such photo packs cost a lot, are not guaranteed to work, and you only have the vendor's word that they have been cold stored. They're only usable in cameras modified to accept an external 4.5v dc power supply.

You can buy new and fresh photo packs from The Impossible Project, though. Just be aware that it's not the same as the original material and is really intended for artistic use. It's also not light stable and fades quickly, so scan any images you wish to keep, but is designed to be far more manipulable than the original material (i.e. you can squeeze and manipulate the photo as it develops to achieve artistic effects unique to each photo).

Click here for the company website where you can learn all about their product and how best to use it. You can buy directly or the site shows you where a few retailers are (not many worldwide).

The battery is built into the photo pack and is not replaceable as a separate item.

Original Polaroid manufactured film is long out of production and now very expensive and unlikely to work due to flat batteries and stale chemistry. Chemistry may be fresh if the film has been cold stored, but cold kills batteries even faster so such films can only reliably be used in cameras modified to accept an external 4.5v dc power supply.

You can buy new photo packs from "The Impossible Project". Click on the link to see details and prices. Note that this film is not exactly the same as the original material, and if you wish to keep images permanently you must scan them as they will fade quickly.

There's a sliding catch on the left side of the camera (as viewed from the front) at the forward edge. Slide it and the lower front panel drops down to reveal the loading slot. Insert the photo pack (you may need to remove an old empty photo pack first).

If the new photo pack is an original Polaroid one, then because they are all so old and far out of date then you may find that the battery is totally dead or has just enough power to eject the cover slide and perhaps one photo. If that is the case either convert your camera to accept an external 6v dc power supply before using the expensive photo pack or buy a freshly manufactured compatible pack from The Impossible Project.

Unless you bought the photo pack recently from The Impossible Project, then it's not new at all and is long past it's use by date.

Polaroid photo packs have the camera battery built into them, and by now every single one will either be stone cold dead or with only just about enough power to eject the cover slide and power the shutter. Even if the battery did work, you'd find the photo chemicals have also gone stale, producing odd colour casts, uneven contrast and usually the camera eject rollers fail to squeeze the chemicals right across the photo fully into the far corners. If the photo pack has been stored refrigerated the whole time before use then the chemistry may be good but the battery will definitely be as dead as a dodo as cold kills batteries.

You only have two fixes:-

1. Remove the current photo pack in total darkness and store it in a light-proof bag, and then modify the camera to take an externally switched 6V dc power supply (it only really needs 4.5V, but 6V is fine and easier/cheaper to get batteries/transformers for). Then replace your photo pack, it will wastefully self-eject the top photo as if it was a cover slide. As the camera was never designed to be dismantled this often results in a broken camera, but they are ten a penny at thrift shops and charity stores and easily available for free via FreeCycle/Freegle.

2. Remove and discard the current photo pack and replace it with a new one from The Impossible Project. Note that they are not the same as the original material: there's only 8 shots instead of 10 and the results are less predictable and far more prone to fading, so scan photos after taking them to preserve the images. The material is aimed far more at artistic users who wish to manipulate the images during development.

Film for these cameras is getting hard to find. I would try searching on Amazon. The battery for the camera is incorporated into the film pack on this type of camera, so it won't do anything without a film in it. If there is a very old film in it, it still may not do anything because the battery has run down.

Unfortunately all bets are off as far as Polaroid 600 photo packs are concerned as they're all so long out of date making their behaviour very unpredictable. Almost all of them now have flat batteries and cannot be used without a modified camera. Refrigerated photo packs will have the freshest chemicals and will respond fairly predictably when they get to room temperature but as cold kills batteries they all definitely need to be used on cameras modified to accept an external battery.

Your problem may therefore be due to old photo chemistry, but it can also be affected by the temperature you've been taking photos at and also if you have the camera lighten/darken control set to darken.

If you have the camera settings correct and are using the camera within the normal temperature operating range then you may wish to try the brand new photo packs which are available from The Impossible Project. Presently they're only available in monochrome and the material is far more temperature sensitive and far less fade resistant than the original material, but their website gives details as to how you can make the images last longer. Personally, I scan them and deliberately set the camera to overexpose the pictures: a good modern scanner can still pull an incredible amount of detail from overexposed images which is revealed by software like Photoshop.

I hope that my free answer has been of use and has given you additional options to fix your problem. Please take a moment to rate my reply.

Your question is a common one, so I hope you don't object to me pasting a generic answer below. There's little point in reinventing the wheel. The One600 Pro has a slightly different construction to other 600 series models, but all 600's do the same job to the same standard.

Polaroid 600 cameras are not designed to be repaired. There are no spare parts available and the camera is of entirely clip together construction; the joints are not designed to be disassembled so tend to break when forced open. When these cameras break, they should be thrown away and replaced.

This may sound negative, but in reality it isn't: Polaroid 600 cameras are quite literally worthless (despite very silly asking prices in some places) and there are millions of them lying unused in peoples' homes. The charity shop which I volunteer for throws away a few of these most weeks as the cameras are unsaleable due to the considerable expense and scarcity of photo packs (including those from The Impossible Project). As a result it's really easy to obtain another camera simply by asking on your local FreeCycle or Freegle group. Their utter worthlessness and general undesirability also means that you have nothing to lose by trying to pull your camera apart to see if you can fix it; there's not much inside to look at, but if your fault is a broken spring anchor (very common) or a failed eject motor (also very common) then you may be able to fix your camera. Just be very careful to avoid touching the large capacitor used to store charge for the flash which some 600 models have: it can keep a dangerous charge for quite a long while unless you know how to safely discharge them.