I just got a Daylab 35 plus yesterday and I was soooo excited about making sx-70 photos with it but they're all turning out crappy. First of all, they have a strong yellow cast to them. I don't understand if it's something with the flash exposure or what. My previous sx-70 photos were taken with my crappy old polaroid which rendered colors pretty normally. Maybe there's a problem with my film pack? But it's not at all old, I just received it from B&H today.

But my biggest annoyance is the focusing. I can focus all fine on the white card, but what good does that do me when the film is several mm below the card??!! This seems so ridiculous to me that I wonder if perhaps my film pack or film pack holder is messed up in some way... perhaps there's supposed to be some spring pushing the film up toward the card and it's not working. I took the same picture three times (trying different filters to get rid of the yellow cast) and, sure enough, the focus got worse with each consecutive picture as the film plane got lower and lower from the white focusing card. For my best focused picture so far, I used the highly unreliable technique of focusing on the white card, then moving the focus knobs just a little bit so that the point of focus would be somewhere lower than the white card. It was pretty good - considering I just guessed! But I didn't pay almost $600 to guess!

So are these problems inherent to the Daylab 35 plus, or is there something wrong with my daylab and / or film pack?

Thanks so much for answering! I can't wait to get this thing to work... I've been dreaming about it for months... talk about disappointing.

-Anna

-- Anna Fizyta (geek@ucsc.edu), March 25, 2004

Answers

Anna, Just saw this thread. Sorry you are having problems with your Daylab 35 plus. This is very disheartening, as I just ordered one. I was totally frustrated with the Daylab II because I have been unable to get the exposure or color to my satisfaction, much less the focus. The Daylab 35 plus has a daylight balanced light source that should be around 5000-5500 degrees Kelvin; this should not produce a warm yellow cast on your pictures. It is a real issue with the Tungsten light source in the Daylab II which is balanced at 3200 degrees Kelvin. I have talked with daylab several times on the phone about my troubles, and they have suggested sending the prints along with the slides and exposure settings to them for evaluation. Since it's under warranty, I will do that next week. Please let me know if you have found any answers. -Bob

-- Bob Rosenstein (rosenstein@adelphia.net), May 05, 2004.

Kathleen Carr addresses many Day-Lab problems in her book "Polaroid Manipulations" (Amphoto Books). For the color cast (Daylab II) she suggests dialing in 30 cyan on the dichroic color head. No comments as far as I can see about the focusing problem. What is the cheapest source of Daylabs?

-- Barbara van Zanten (FraPhoto@aol.com), May 17, 2004.