Polaroid unveiled the most elegant camera of the twentieth in the early 1970s: the SX-70. About 15 years later they unleashed the antithesis of the SX-70 on the western world: the Macro5 SLR. The only thing the two cameras have in common is that they are both single lens reflex cameras. But that aside, the SX-70 is the Beauty to the Macro5’s Beast.

It was originally produced for medical and dental close-up documentation, which explains, in part, it’s specialized look and lack of outward aesthetics. I bought my first Macro5 on eBay about five years ago. At one point, it appeared to have been used in a dentist’s office. There’s a sticker pasted on the rear of the camera instructing the user to “keep magnification at 1x for mouth only shots.” Above that, someone added, “2x for tooth shots.” The advent of digital photography ended demand for the camera from those markets, and it’s since been co-opted by photographers to view the world in more intimate terms.

The Macro5 is a brute of a camera. If it were a super hero, it’d be The Hulk. Picture a Spectra ProCam on steroids, inside  a shoebox standing on end, with handles on either side and a viewfinder near the top. That’s the Macro5. Weighing in at four pounds, it’s the chunky integral cousin to Polaroid’s pack film behemoth, the 600SE (which tips the scales at four pounds, 13 ounces). It uses five separate lenses, mounted on an internal rotating turret, offering five separate magnifications. According to the Polaroid repair manual, “each lens has the proper focal length for minimum perspective distortion and more working space between the camera and the subject, and a small aperture for better depth of field.”

And that’s this particular Polaroid’s saving grace, the one thing that makes it a remarkable camera and fun to shoot with: it it allows photographers to get about three inches from their subject with 300% magnification at f/100.

But man, is it cumbersome. Most people can steer a car through a curve using one hand, but I defy anyone to make a photo with the Macro5 one-handed, even with a tripod. And when the focus-assist ranging lamps stop working, like the ones on mine have, it’s difficult to focus.

The results are worth the effort, even using Impossible’s quirky films. One of my favorite Polaroid pictures was shot using a Macro5 and Impossible’s PZ680 film in 2013 of dried geraniums. It’s a vivid image. I can’t help but wonder what the dentist who originally used the camera might say if they saw how their camera was being put to use today.