Article and photos by PHSNE member Ryck Lent

Recently I came across an ad for the LomoGraflok 4×5 Instant Back buried deep in the company website (https://shop.lomography.com/us/lomograflok-4-5-instant-back). The inventive Lomographers created a battery-powered semi-4×5 Instax Wide film holder based on the tried-and-true 4×5 Graflok design. The price was right, as were the $15 10-packs of Instax Wide in monochrome, black border, and regular color (all from Fujifilm).

In late August I tested the LomoGraflok 4×5 Instant Back on my Wista 4×5 SP technical camera. The product includes the Graflok holder, which uses 4 AA batteries to eject the Instax Wide, and a Film Plane Calibration and Mask (FPCM) device. The film is 10.8cm wide x 8.6cm tall (4 1/4″ x 3 3/8″); the image is 9.9cm wide x 6.2cm tall (3 7//8″ x 2 7/16″). I chose a Fujinon 135mm f5.6 1-500 lens, put the rig together and got started.

The process: Open the holder, put in 4 AA batteries, open the back of the film holder, pop in a 10-pack Instax Wide (don’t try different sizes!), close it, push the ON switch, push the film eject button, and watch the cover sheet pop out on the long top side of the holder. Remove the holder from the camera before anything gets ejected or it will get stuck in the Graflok spring bars, causing no end of mess.

You might think this Instant Back will be a cinch. Nope. The FPCM goes into the camera’s Graflok holder first, directly in front of the ground glass, 21.2mm further back than the normal ground glass focal plane. The instructions read: “Open the lens/camera shutter, adjust the camera bellows length until you can see an approximate sharp image on the ground glass and focus your subject in detail.”

To put it mildly, it is a very time-consuming process. After a lot of trial-and-error, you can get a decent image on the ground glass. Now close the shutter/fstop switch, check your exposure meter (!), set desired shutter speeds and f-stops, and then, very carefully, remove the FPCM from the Graflok holder and slide the LomoGraflok Instant Back where the FPCM used to be. It’s much heavier and thicker than the FPCM. Lock EVERY single knob to keep the camera stable and in-focus.

Reviewing the steps to success: aperture and shutter closed; exposure set, shutter cocked, remove the dark slide, take the shot, close the dark slide. Turn on the holder if there is nothing in the way of the ejection slot. Press the film ejection button, hold your breath…and you will find a black side and white side popping out of the holder. White side is what you want. Now you wait. A long wait. 5 – 15 minutes before the image stabilizes.

Comments after a two day trial of Wista 45 SP with Fujinon 135mm 5.6 and Fujinon 180mm 5.6 (a Fujinon 75mm 5.6 lens would not work due to the 21.2mm deeper focal plane):

1. It works! It worked the very first time I used it after an hour or more of tweaking and fiddling.
2. Instax Wide is an OK version of a pre-2000 Polaroid Spectra print, but Polaroid back then had the edge on color and depth .
3. Instax Wide has a very narrow exposure range. After nearly twenty prints, only four were really saturated and detailed.
4. I used my LunaPro F for exposure settings. The trick was to use the incident white dome next to my subjects. Half a stop either way was too light or too dark.
5. The Wista 45 SP was stiff after being unused for quite a while. The lenses worked perfectly, but the big issue was finding the right focal point to get a sharp image. (Lomographers suggest that Instax works well with a shallow depth of field image. I’ll try it.)
6. The 21.2mm rear focal plane is a problem. Most technical 4×5 cameras have a housing and not much room. View cameras with a deep wide-angle lens might work better.

To sum it up: the Lomography gang have created a workable instant film option for large format work.