Pulling Film
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🪦 The Death of Packfilm

🪦 The Death of Packfilm

Will it ever return?

Ben Henschel
October 24, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Hi, happy Thursday! 👋

I was able to scan some film the other day. It was some Kodak Portra 160 taken with the Yashica TLR in the Catskills. I’m a fan of this one:

Kodak Portra 160

It was a rainy and foggy day. 🌧️ Weather conditions I don’t take advantage of enough. Next time it’s raining, don’t be afraid to take your camera out.

Here’s what we got for you today:

🪦 The death of packfilm
📷 Vintage Polaroid camera
📺 Recommended videos

🪦 The death of packfilm

It was spring of 2016. The photography world lost something special. This was when Fujifilm discontinued their Fuji FP-100C film. 😭

So what is packfilm?

Packfilm, also known as peel-a-part film was a type of instant film. It contained both a negative and a positive. The photographer would pull the film through rollers that spread the development paste across the negative and positive. After a certain amount of time, the photographer would “peel apart” the film revealing both the negative and the positive image.

This differs from integral instant film (the Polaroid film you’re use to) which contains everything all in one and doesn’t require any effort on the photographer.

Why is it missed?

Packfilm was loved by many as it had a couple of advantages over regular Polaroid instant film.

It was fun! 😁 At least it looks fun. I’ve never successfully used peel-a-part film (we’ll get to that story). But people enjoyed the tactile experience of peeling the film apart and revealing the image.
It produced a higher quality image than integral Polaroid film
It was available for larger formats. It was often used with large format photography as a way of checking composition/exposure before committing to a sheet of film.
It gave you both a negative and a positive. If you wanted to you could keep and scan the negative.

Any chance it will be made again?

I really hope so. But it seems unlikely. Polaroid, which stopped making peel-a-part film in the 90s, has said the machinery and chemistry needed is too different from the integral film they produce today. Fujifilm no longer has the machinery to produce it. So the demand would have to be pretty high to justify developing these machines and chemistry again. 😢

There is some packfilm still floating around. You can get expired Polaroid peel-a-part roll film (I did…see below). And Fuji FP-100C is available on eBay, although it is very expensive. Plus there is no guarantees that these films will still produce a good result.

There is one glimmer of hope. The company, One Instant, has been trying to create some. They offer some DIY kits.

📷 Vintage Polaroid camera

I hinted earlier that I have tried and failed to use peel-a-part film. Here is what happened.

At an antique store, I found a Polaroid J66 Land camera from the 60s. This camera used an instant peel-a-part film called Polaroid Type 47. Unlike most packfilm that are single sheets, Type 47 is actually a roll of film. Each roll contained 8 shots, and would be pulled through the camera’s rollers and peeled a part.

Polaroid stopped making their roll film in 1992. However, expired film is still available on eBay. Determined to try my newly acquired Polaroid camera, I decided to buy a roll of Type 47 film.

For $40 I was able to get a roll of film that expired in August of ‘92. Knowing that there were no guarantees, I anxiously loaded the film into the camera.

I then proceeded with the 4 steps of taking a picture. Pulling the film out of the camera, and ripping it off the roll, I patiently waited the necessary development time. Peeling a part the film revealed goopy mess and no image. 😢

I tried the rest of the roll, getting the same results. I believe the development paste had partially dried up and it wasn’t able to spread out evenly across the negative.

It was certainly a bummer, but it was still fun trying it out.