Fuji FP-100c Photo Frame Project
December 28, 2016This year has been a rollercoaster ride for me both professionally and personally. I had been in a creative hunch for the most of the year and I had not done a single personal project since March. I needed to do something to re-spark my creativity, and I wanted to do it through a new medium. I wanted to learn something new.
As an avid fan of Polaroids and instant films, especially the Fuji Land Camera packfilms, I’ve always used the FP100c/FP3000b cartridge to store and display my favorite packfilm photos. It looks simple, elegant, and it’s a perfect re-purpose of the normally discarded film cartridge.
“DIY PHOTO FRAME” Tutorial from www.casualphotophile.com
However, I wanted to go a step further and create a packfilm cartridge photo frame with a hidden surprise, I immediately thought: - What if I made a cartridge photo frame thats also a hidden light box with hidden light effects? Eureka.
It was around middle of November when the idea sparked so naturally I wanted to make it in time for the Holidays, because 1. It would be a great personalized gift to give; 2. It would give me a hard deadline. In the end I made a total of 3 film cartridge light boxes, in this post I will talk in detail about one of them.
I wanted to make one based on the artwork of my closest friend and frequent collaborator, Janda Farley. Her piece “Outsides/insides” had been a favorite of mine and I thought it was the perfect piece for this due to the depth and layers within the composition.
Janda Farley “Outsides/insides” 2015
Here’s a diagram of what I’m about to create. Piece of cake yeah??
So the first step was to determine which area I would like to illuminate, I did a quick photoshop job to figure out which areas would work out the best, and it ended up being served as a template for my prints as well as stencils.
Stencil layer on the left, photo layer on the right
I scanned the faceplate of the FP-100c cartridge in order to get a perfect 1:1 ratio of the cartridge size, and from that I resized and aligned the artwork to fully utilize the display window. Then I duplicated and pen-tooled all areas I would like the light to shine through while filling the rest black, this will act as a “stencil layer” which will shield the LED lights coming from behind creating specifically lit areas. In total there will be 3 layers of photos combined, 1st layer on matte photo paper, 2nd layer on vellum paper, 3rd (stencil) layer on card stock.
After printing and cutting, I combined the 3 layers and framed it within the faceplate of the cartridge. I hovered it over my desk lamp, it worked beautifully!
View from the inside
Frontal view. Yeah!!
Next step was to determine how to build the electronics that goes inside. I know I wanted 3 light sources inside: 1 for the doorway, 1 for the wolves eyes, and 1 for the night sky. I wanted the end product to be exactly as seen above.
I gave myself a 1 week crash course on electronics 101 using a mix of YouTube, internet forums and just Google-ing around. I went and bought a breadboard kit and using the app EveryCircuit (great app to learn with!!), I made this circuitry diagram based on the would be locations of the LED and battery placement:
Using Ohm’s law I calculated (to the best of my ability) the resistance needed for each LED.
I plugged the parts needed into a breadboard to make sure it worked and it did! Now time to build it!
Soldering for the first time was actually not as bad as I thought, I bought a cheapo soldering iron and hollowed out a kitchen sponge and after watching a few YouTube videos I was ready to go. Using a Third Hand tool I took my time and soldered the entire thing in about an hour. Burnt my fingers only a few times and I learned (the hard way) not to reach for the iron without looking…
I’m sure someone on the internet is cringing at this mess lol.
Completed circuitry.
It works! Time to assemble!
With the circuitry now complete, it was time to put it all together. I needed the positions of the LEDs to be precise, so I printed an additional copy of the artwork to use as a map for positioning the LEDs, wires, and battery.
Using the “photo map” I can locate and easily hot glue the LEDs in their correct positions, I also hollowed out a slot for the push button to be on the back of the cartridge.
Everything hot glued and conformed into place.
Final stretch. Everything being put into place.
Cutting through the back plate of the film cartridge was a royal pain in the ass, I’m not too crafty so I just took my time and patiently saw though the plastic until I had the roughly sized square hole for the switch. Luckily I didn’t even need to glue it, the hole was just a few millimeters smaller than the switch for me to squeeze right through and hold it there permanently!
Perfectly blended into the backplate, you wouldn’t know its a button until you accidentally press it!
To hide the innards, I cut a slightly longer lengthed card stock that lined the back of the cartridge. The length being longer so that it could be bent and tucked into the top lip creating a smooth ramp along the top opening. The 9v battery turned out to be a little bit bigger depth-wise for the cartridge so I had to compromise and cut a piece of the back lining out, that millimeter of card stock really made a world of difference!
With everything put together, the piece is complete!!
Here it is animated.
Here it is in action. Yes, it does fit into a Polaroid Land Camera 250!
This project took me a week to research and a weekend to complete, it was such a fun and rewarding learning experience. I love that piece of art so much and I can’t wait to surprise Janda with it!
As I mentioned before I made 3 of these photo frames, in my next post I will explain how I utilized a Polaroid Spektra film cartridge and using its own battery to power my next photo frame! Stay tuned!