Century Graphic Polaroid Back

I saw a beautiful Century Graphic on eBay and had to buy it. The Century's are all 2x3 cameras, also called "baby Graphics" because of their smaller size. The pictures are actually 2-1/4" by 3-1/4" which is the same size as 6cm x 9cm medium format cameras. The red bellows look great and it takes great pictures.

They came standard with a ground glass back which accepts 2x3 sheet film holders. 2x3 sheet film is very hard to find these days. Fortunately, a variety of roll film backs are available which hold 120 film and take pictures in 6x9 or 6x7 formats depending on which back you get.

I wanted to also be able to shoot Polaroid type instant film and went looking for a back. Surprisingly, there was never a commercial Polaroid back for the 2x3 Graflex cameras. Horseman made one, but they're very hard to find, expensive and debatable whether they would actually fit onto a Graflex.

So I decided to make my own out of a Graflex 2x3 Graphic Film Pack Adapter (provides the connection to the Graflok back) and a Hasselblad Polaroid back.

This pic shows the Film pack Adapter on the bottom and Polaroid back on the top. I used a Dremel tool to cut out the appropriate sized openings and a drill to line up holes on the two pieces.

This shows the assembled pieces. I used black electrician's tape and liquid electrician's tape to seal things up light tight.

And attached to the camera, it looks like this.

The focal plane for the Polaroid back is further back than the normal ground glass, so you need to adjust where you lock the focusing rails. I used a home made ground glass in a used Fuji FP-100C cartridge to find infinity focus and then marked the focusing rail accordingly.

Here are a couple of Pictures made using some of my last Fuji FP-3000B film. Unfortunately, since I did this project, Fuji has also announced discontinuation of FP-100C, so now there are no more peel apart Polaroid type films being manufactured. I still have a dozen boxes in the refrigerator. A pity, since peel apart film and the cameras that use it are so much higher quality than the Instax films and cameras Fuji is currently selling.