Way back in the mists of time I blogged about whether one should crop a Polaroid (no Impossible film then) shot to correct the framing. Looks like that old entry has fallen down the back of the sofa in one of the many moves. Anyway, I think the general conclusion was yes, why not/no, absolutely never. The main issue I was confronting was whether to crop into the shot. If you look at my flickr stream you’ll see that I usually crop away the Polaroid frames: this is for both artistic and pragmatic reasons. Artistic, because I’m not so worried about the frame itself, mainly about the image. Sure the frame is there on the real image, but once it’s been scanned, it’s not the real thing any more, and my focus is on the picture.

But sometimes the frame is part of the image, particularly with films such as PX600 Black Frame. And I’ve generally avoided scanning the whole frame because my scans suffer terribly from dreaded Newton Rings. Those rings are hateful rainbow interference patterns caused by contact between the shiny surface of the print and the shiny surface of the scanner. My solution has been to pop the print back into an empty cartridge and scan, thus raising the print just above the surface of the glass. But inevitable that covers up most of the frame. Sigh.

But sigh no more! The magnificent Dave Bias, Impossible America’s Vice President, founding member of Save Polaroid, designer of the original website for my favourite band in the universe, Medeski Martin and Wood (design since sadly replaced), wearer of hats and beard, has come up with a solution, which has been manufactured, bought by me, and it works!

The Impossible Project Scan Adapter

Really simple and straightforward, and as you can see from Neptune above, no rings.

So, thank you Dave!