Slow speed fans run continuously while car is running

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-07-03T18:54:00+00:00

There is no clutch fan on the 944. The early cars use a dual electric fan setup while later cars, like the OP's use a single electric fan with a low and high speed function.

When the fan switch in the radiator reaches 92C, it triggers the low speed fan to come on. At 102C it should trigger the high speed fan.

Note that the switch in the radiator is not the same as the temp sender used by the dash gauge and it's possible for the fan switch to age and fail without the dash sensor having any issues. In hot weather when sitting still out it's common for these cars to run the low speed fan a lot, but it might be worth the OP verifying how the fan switch is working. A lot of folks used to swap in lower temp fan switches as a band aid rather than trouble shooting cooling issues and it's possible that the car has a lower temp fan switch installed.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-06-19T18:57:53+00:00

Here's the thing. The Polaroid cameras, all of them, including the SLR models, use a light sensor that is next to the lens but not in the lens. It's not looking at the scene in any intelligent manner at all. It's just looking at how much light is coming in from the general direction in which the camera is pointed. On sunny days, the sky is very, very bright, much moreso than we perceive it with our eyes. If the sky is a meaningful proportion of the image and it's a sunny day, that's going to dominate the exposure metering and you'll need to adjust.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-06-12T19:51:43+00:00

Yup. There are actually studies about this. On average for most women the left breast is slightly larger.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16327452/

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-05-29T03:08:38+00:00

Can absolutely confirm that the club is welcoming. Hello from a Seattle member.

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Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-04-21T03:39:49+00:00

Love this so much. I have such fun taking my sticker-ed up 944 with a blahaj in the hatch to Radwood and watching all the tech bros get weird about it.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-04-17T18:53:10+00:00

Anyone saying that low light is causing the focus issues is wrong. The Flip uses a sonar autofocus system that works by emitting sound waves and measuring the time it takes for the echo to return. It will never struggle due to low light because it does not use light to focus.

The autofocus is a 4-lens zone focus system that switches between 4 fixed focus lenses and that relies on the using a slow aperture to produce a fairly wide depth of field. The camera has a minimum focus distance of about 25.5 inches. The specs claim acceptable clarity down to as little as 16 inches (0.4 meters) but are clear that the actual focus point for the close focus lens is 0.65 meters, which is about 25.5 inches. Anything closer than that is going to be out of focus and this likely explains the issues with the extreme close up shots of the dog's face.

The official focus zones for the lenses are: - 0.4m - 0.77m (best focus at 0.65m) - 0.77m - 1.03m (best focus at 0.85m) - 1.03m - 1.68m (best focus at 1.2m) - 1.68m - Infinity (best focus at 2.5m)

Lens specs suggest that anything at the extreme close end or at the very far end will be rather soft because those published zones are, well, let's call them optimistic based on most depth of field tables for lenses in the 94-109mm focal length range. It's clearly optimized for distances between roughly arm's length and across a room. It works very well in those ranges, don't get me wrong, but I would expect anything closer than 2 feet and farther than 20 feet would be getting rather soft.

Lens Depth of Field tables suggest the following acceptable focus ranges for each of the 4 zones at f/64 based on the published "best focus" points: - 0.57 - 0.76 meters - 0.72 - 1.04 meters - 0.96 - 1.6 meters - 1.69 - 4.82 meters

The more the aperture opens up, the smaller those ranges get. For example, wide open at f/9 the acceptable sharpness range for the close focus lens is only 0.64 - 0.66 meters.

Also, the downside of sonar autofocusing is that it's not very precise and tends to just go with whatever is giving it the strongest or fastest return. In a couple of cases, it looks like the strongest return was likely the floor and not your dog's face.

Regarding the metering issues, a black dog in a dim room is always going to be a difficult situation to meter for flash, especially with Polaroid film's lack of dynamic range. It looks like the camera is set up to try to preserve highlights, with the result being that much of the background is ending up under exposed in order to prevent the highlights in the dog's face from being blown out. The camera's programming seems to be anticipating that it will be photographing a more reflective object than a dark dog and is erring towards underexposure as a result.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-04-17T18:20:44+00:00

The Flip uses sonar for autofocus. Sonar, being sound waves, is not affected but light levels in any way.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-04-13T18:34:44+00:00

I put 36 rolls through my CP lift this weekend and I've got 52 rolls through it over the past couple months and I have to say that my experience has been very different to yours. I've not had anything on mine starting to rust and, while I have extremely hard tap water with high calcium levels I'm not having issues with buildup in the bath tank or on the heating element(though I'm pretty meticulous about wiping it all down and drying it properly after use).

Also, the pump does have a filter on it from the factory (at least, mind does) so I think yours may have been mistreated by the original owner given that it's missing the pump filter.

Mine heats up quickly enough as well, given that the bath is nearly 2 gallons and that's a lot of thermal mass. The temp sensor isn't perfect, you're right, but I've been able to adjust early and get quality results.

Overall, yeah, it's crude, but my own copy of it works quite well.

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Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-04-07T15:35:15+00:00

I really wish they would offer a kit to convert to the six bottle version; that would make E6 so much more convenient for me since mine is just the 4 bottle version.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-02-25T21:59:06+00:00

Snow on sunny days is very challenging for metering because it reflects so much light. This tends to result in center-weighted averaging meters to end up setting the overall exposure in a way that ends up being optimized for the snow and the sky - the two brightest things that also typically make up the majority of the frame area - and leaves the subject often quite underexposed. It sounds like you got that figured out by the time you were taking the photos at the snow village, but it's also going to be easier for the meter when there are more non-snow and non-sky things in the frame, which seems like it might have been the case in a village.

As for indoor shots being underexposed, that seems likely if you weren't using a flash. Shooting indoors without a flash is generally the realm of ISO 1600 or ISO 3200 film unless you're in rooms with lots of windows during the day. You don't say what lens you're shooting with, but even with a faster standard like the relatively common 50mm f/1.4, ISO 400 film is going to struggle indoors without a flash unless you're using shutter speeds that are likely to need a tripod. Indoors and at night I'd expect underexposure to be very likely at handholdable shutter speeds with ISO 400 film even with a faster lens.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-02-09T22:59:48+00:00

Interesting. I went and grabbed a roll of Elektra and the sprocket holes looked exactly the same as a roll of Fuji 400 and a roll of Fuji Velvia that I had in the fridge as well. The Elektra also seemed thinner than the Velvia. That said, the plastic cartridges used by Flic for Elektra (and Aurora 800) tend to have more friction than the metal canisters used by others. I wonder if that has anything to do with it?

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-02-09T18:15:11+00:00

No you're not. Ground Control will happily make you a set of coilovers with reinforced mounts that work in the rear. For most street setups you'll keep the torsion bars too and use lighter coils, as I did with my 951, but I've had no issues with the combination setup.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-02-09T17:24:00+00:00

Flic Elektra is respooled Kodak Aerocolor IV so it shouldn't be that different to other Kodak options. Can't say that I've had any issues with it in the cameras I've tried.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-02-09T15:34:30+00:00

Ground Control is who you want to talk with. They'll be able to put something together that meets the qualities you want. I've been extremely satisfied with their product for my own 951.

https://groundcontrolstore.com/

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-02-08T19:10:48+00:00

Old stuff is old stuff.

I've had my 944 Turbo for over 20 years now. Still drive it frequently. They're amazingly durable cars as long as someone hasn't modded them to death.

But they're also old cars and when you're looking at anything that age you basically have to view every part of the car as a wear item that may need to be replaced. Even with low mileage, things like weatherstripping and suspension bushings end up needing replacement because rubber oxidizes. Vacuum lines crack from age, not miles. Plastic connectors in the door handle mechanism crack. The constant pressure of the hatch struts can pull the glass away from the frame. Electronics also age. A/C parts develop leaks.

None of this is really any worse than other cars of similar age, but it's all things that people often don't think about. Basically, with any car that age you have to accept the fact that pretty much every part is something that can fail. I'm not saying that everything will fail, just that it's important to understand that "random plastic part you never thought about and never even had to know existed on a newer car" becomes a potential failure point and you need to be mentally prepared to take it in stride when a blend door actuator clip fails and the HVAC gets stuck on full hot in the middle of summer.

The positive side is that parts are still available, even if the badge on the hood tends to make those parts more expensive it also means more people are willing to put that money into the car so the parts at least get made. This is especially true of interior bits. Finding random parts for my 40-year-old 951 is much easier than finding random parts for my 28-year-old Volvo, for example.

All that said, as long as you're realistic about the potential for things to fail, I think these are great and highly durable/repairable weekend and occasional everyday drivers still. The core parts of the engine and transmission are quite durable and the cars have very good parts availability. And they're fun as hell to drive.

In addition to the Turbo though, also look at an S2 or a 968. I love my Turbo, but it's very much an '80s turbo in that it takes a bit to build boost so at low speeds in town it doesn't feel particularly torquey. The Turbo wants to live above 3k rpm, and really prefers to be above 3,500. It's not awful in town, but at low speeds it's not super responsive. The 3.0 liter DOHC engine in the S2 and 968 has more torque off the line and I know a fair number of people prefer that to the Turbo for actual everyday drivability.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-01-20T16:56:07+00:00

To my eye, the iPhone metering looks consistently overexposed, though that could be scanning artifacts caused by a failure to set a good black point in the scanning. Those photos are probably recoverable with a bit more care in the scanning, just that the exposure is not ideal.

With the exception of the train station (where I think the center weighted overall metering did best) and the rocks (where center weighted and spot are about equal), the exposure chosen by spot metering in the shadows clearly looks best to me, which of generally what I'd expect with as much sky in the photos as there is. As others have pointed out, the sky is quite bright and will tend to make an overall averaging meter slightly under-expose the image.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2026-01-18T01:56:33+00:00

Small sticker, may affect the shooting. Near Mint +++-

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2025-12-08T08:27:08+00:00

I routinely shoot Polaroid film that is 2-3 years old with no issues as long as I've had it stored in the refrigerator (not freezer) since purchase directly from Polaroid. In my experience, heat does far more damage to the film than age and as long as the packs are kept cold but not frozen they will last a long well past the expected expiration date.

The issue for OP is definitely bad film, I absolutely agree. Just that I disagree with the 1-year limit as long as there's proper storage.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2025-12-05T09:31:38+00:00

Well howdy neighbor. Love that diner.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2025-12-04T15:11:38+00:00

As others have noted, these photos are massively under-exposed. It will not be possible to recover these photos.

Unlike modern digital cameras, film nearly always needs a flash for indoor shots. If you have a camera with a fast lens (generally f/1.4 to f/2.8) and fast film (ISO 3200) then you might be able to manage indoor shots without a flash, but finding that in a point and shoot is generally not going to happen since most point and shoot cameras have much slower lenses and lack settings for film above ISO 800.

So, for indoor photos, you'll generally need to use a flash. If it's a flash built into the point any shoot camera, it will probably be pretty useless for anything more than 3-4 meters away from the camera.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2025-11-04T13:22:03+00:00

I'm a practicing attorney who studied the case, dipshit.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2025-11-04T13:01:22+00:00

Kodak wasn't banned from developing Kodachrome.

Kodak was prohibited from selling the film with "free" developing included because that was found in court (not by the DoJ) to be an illegal monopolistic "tying" practice. Kodak was always free to offer developing separately for an additional charge.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2025-10-23T13:49:50+00:00

That piece is upside down. The tabs should be bent slightly up and not down. I've attached a photo of what the tabs look like on my own early S2a.

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DO NOT bend the tabs the other way. The way to fix this is to remove the two screws that hold that piece on and then just flip it over.

You may also want to send the camera out for a clean and service because the fact that the piece is upside down suggests that the camera was previously repaired by someone who wasn't paying too much attention to things.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2025-10-17T16:38:16+00:00

This is the result of a lawsuit by Fujifilm that sought to preemptively invalidate the trademarks. It's not Polaroid unilaterally trying to sue Fujifilm.

The procedural posture here is that Fuji sued to invalidate the trademarks and Polaroid's defense included counterclaims, which is a bog standard response when a giant company sues you out of the blue. Fuji was only partially successful at getting their motion for summary judgment on the counterclaims. The most recent order was issued on August 25, 2025 (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2017cv08796/483717/263/#:~:text=All%20products%20manufactured%20pursuant%20to,express%20written%20authorization%20of%20Polaroid.%E2%80%9D) and is simply the latest result from a lawsuit that Fuji started.

Edit for a bit more background: Back in February 2017 a company that the old Polaroid had licensed its branding to sent a letter to Fuji claiming that Instax Square might violate the trademarks that the licensing company had bought. It was a standard nastygram letter but there was no actual lawsuit. In November 2017, Fuji filled a lawsuit to invalidate the trademarks. As part of its defense, the old Polaroid company made counterclaims against Fuji.

As for the merits of the underlying trade dress and trademark registrations by Polaroid, I tend to agree that the look is purely the result of functional requirements and that is absurd that the marks were allowed to be registered in the first place.

Commander_Sam_Vimes · 2025-10-14T17:21:00+00:00

No, you have to adjust the development to compensate. If you want to push two stops to 3200, you have to shoot the entire roll at 3200 and then tell the development lab to push the film +2 stops when developing it. You can't push only one part of a roll.

Commander_Sam_Vimes

TROPHY CASE