Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Vintage Polaroid Camera Lamp

There is something very sacrilegious about this next project.  A while back I picked up a 1967 Polaroid Land Camera on eBay with the intent to convert it to use 4x5 sheet film.  The conversion looked fairly easy, but in order to develop the film, I would have had to carry around a portable developing tank.  This seemed like a real hassle, so I decided to just put the camera on my shelf as a conversation piece.
After gathering dust for months, I struck upon the idea tonight to remove the lens from the camera and turn it into a lamp.  A quick Google search for "Polaroid Camera Lamp" yielded no relevant results and I decided that I might have come up with a completely unheard of creation, or at least something that hadn't been tried since before the invention of the internet.  My theory is, if you can't find it by page 3 of Google, than it doesn't exist.

The following images are a photo documentation of my little Frankenstein operation, courtesy of my camera phone (still haven't got around to replacing my stolen camera).  I'm really digging the result, but something felt very wrong about destroying a 43 year old relic.  I still need to remove the outer lens from the faceplate, which will also help keep the light bulb in place more snugly.  It was looking like I would have to conduct a bit of surgery with my Dremel in order to get that lens out, so I am going to finish up tomorrow.






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