Polaroid Land Camera 180

Polaroid Land Camera 180
image by Graustark (Image rights)

The Polaroid Land Camera 180 looks just like any other folding camera in the Polaroid 100-400 series. They use the same3&frac;14&times4¼" instant peel-apart film. Also having similar metal bodies, with tripod sockets and similar folding Zeiss viewfinders of the higher end models like the Automatic 250 and 350. So what is different?

First the 180 has a 114mm f/4.5 Tominon lens manufactured by Tomioka with a fully manual exposure settings. The aperture settings go from f90 to f4.5 with 18 click stops. The shutter speeds run from 1s to 1/500 with B. A front lever selects the flash sync setting, M for bulb or X for electronic flash; "V" is a self-timer setting.

Also on the lens is an EV window with settings from 5 to 22 EV. The design of the lens rings make it easy to use EV exposure settings on this camera. The EV numbers can be set at 1/2 EV click stops. Once the correct EV setting has been set, It is very easy to twist both the aperture and shutter dials at the same time to maintain a particular EV number; but it is also easy to set the aperture or shutter independently. The EV scale is similar in concept to that used in the Pathfinder series of instant cameras.