Last year, I inherited a Mamiya m645 film camera from my uncle and shooting with it has been a completely new experience. To compose and focus, you need to look down into top of the camera where a piece of ground glass sits. To calculate expsoure, an external light meter is required. The whole process is slow, but the character and quality of the lens and larger film area compared to a 35mm film or digital camera make it worth the extra work.

I really enjoy shooting instant film, as it allows you to take pictures and almost immediately have a physical copy in your hand that you can share. Some old instant film formats, namely fuji fp-100, have become discontinued and are now harder to come by. Modern instant film cameras are accessible but are extremely limited in their lens quality as well as exposure and focus control. In order to bridge the gap between modern instant films and the image quality and control of the Mamiya, I decided to convert an existing Instax camera into a film back for my camera.

Some challenges involved in this conversion include:

Maintaining focal plane alignment
Ensuring light-tight seals around moving parts
Creating a latching mechanism to hold instax back onto camera

As of now, I have dissasebmled the instax camera and have begun to work on interfacing the film holder with the back of the mamiya camera. More updates soon...