Fuji Instax in all its forms won this battle and there’s a cottage industry of Instax-holding backs being 3D-printed to retro-fit older cameras like the 600SE or anything with a Graflok connection.
That said, if the outcome of modern Polaroids is exactly what you’re after and an SX70 is not your cup of tea, here’s your new toy.
I wish they'd work on getting film costs down rather than releasing overpriced toys. Instax is still kicking their ass for prices long-term.
Zink was a mistake that should have never been made. I've never had a quality print off a Zink printer.
People said the quality wasn't good but I thought, "how bad can it really be?"
Pretty terrible!
I don't understand how zink can be a thing that people buy, unless they are all people like me who will never buy it again.
As for One Instant film, sheesh, a labour of love. Mine are stashed away along with the last of my peel-apart, I should just use them all.
At this confluence of money-time-effort, I hope we would recognize a black hole when we encounter it on earth and find a better way, but it apparently requires EVEN MORE money to fix, thanks to the destruction.
In the US, at least, Polaroid cameras and film are widely available, even at convenience and drugstores, not to mention online. This new camera is a tool for artists, which harkens back to the way Edwin Land originally conceived and marketed the product.
This is a printed-to-order back for the 600SE that I was considering:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/134203663096?amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA0...
https://www.zluxtech.com/store/products/polaroid-600se-insta...
No thanks.
An ex of mine had a Polaroid, and had taken hundreds of pictures with friends and family, all cherished and passed to loved ones.
There's something special and somehow human about small, candid, imperfect photos that hits just right on memory lane and evokes nostalgia. It's more than just what it presents, it's about what it represents, and about the experience itself.
It stops being just a photo. Looking at it and going down memory lane is an experience in and of itself. You get to live that with your eyes, your fingers, your ears, and your nose even, and at the same time you can share them with others. At the same time you evoke the feelings and experiences from when you took it.
Every time you look at that picture you don't just remember what it depicts, you also experience every other time you experienced it.
That's just something no digital photo will ever be able to capture.
Aside from that - how did your ex manage to avoid fading?
Polaroids are absolutely notorious for yellow-fade. And the chemistry is weird and fragile.
It takes a month or so for the photo to fix. If you do anything to it in that time - cut off the white edges, squeeze it an album, expose it to light - the fading happens even more quickly.
https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/concept/klexos
I have a special place in my heart for the dictionary of obscure sorrows :')
I doubt with this price tag they can sell enough to offset R&D and marketing costs.
But I still had a big 8x10 field camera that I would take portraits with. DSLRs totally took over the film world...and I would NEVER go back to 35mm or even medium format. But you can't get the same thing with digital that an 8x10 platinum contact print from a large format camera can give you. That's really the only time I can see using "obsolete" tech in photography. These Polaroid things can ALL be simulated in digital. Are they instant? No. Which is good.
And for adults that want to take a few risqué photos they are great as they are easier to keep track of than their digital cousins.
I mean I just go done scanning all my predigital photos because analog photos suck. Why would anybody want this?
just about the only thing this could possibly beat an SX70 on is the autofocus if it's good, maybe shutter speed but they seem cagey about it, and maybe durability.
the foldable sx70 is just too nice. who wants to carry around a brick?
if you are a camera hacker check out the OpenSX70 project.
edit: specs on the shop page https://www.polaroid.com/en_us/products/i2-polaroid-camera
98mm/f8 to f64 (28mm equiv), shutter 1/250 (seriously?), and AF is infrared so you'll hate it. fuckin analog yo
Edwin Land was the Steve Jobs of that era, the SX70 was the iPod of that era. His Wikipedia page: a pathetic 3,000 words. Dieter Rams (another Jobsian figure) doesn't figure much better, but nothing he ever designed was as big as the SX70, as brilliant as he was. And Land was actual scientist, he made meaningful technologies for WW2, he's practically a war hero, and yet, who the fuck knows who he is outside of Walter Isaacson readers?
Polaroid.com picked some cool photographers. It feels like social media adjacent stuff without being so low brow. I'm surprised they didn't do Elsa Dorfman. They are missing a lot of opportunities with the heritage. Of course they didn't show me a Andy Warhol, but then again, they probably don't have the rights to do that.
If you're going to be a heritage brand, you ought to think how to equip the greats, the Weegees and the Diane Arbuses, who could surely make interesting stuff with a Polaroid. But if they lived today, they'd use a D700 and an ultrawide, a DSLR composes a lot better than an LCD screen or an EVF and sensor technology has practically peaked in 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RyiS-mrp1c). The real problem is that Apple is so painfully apolitical, social media photography on iPhones is the layperson equivalent of crapstraction, so they'll never deliver something advertises that it's for "getting the shot," they'll stick to advertising that it's for "getting the shot [of the totally uncontroversial everyman thing that is personally interesting / sentimental only to you]." You know, something consumerist and literally disposable, like a polaroid.
This characterisation (tagging? clubbing?) comes across as an insult to those figures.
I also looked and take photos and then again looked at those photos. These people just take photos and never and never look at those photos usually again.
BUT - the value prop has totally changed. Running costs are very high, for processing and scanning or printing, and where digital had high upfront costs initially for computers, everyone already has those now anyway. Plus the variety and diversity of film photography has narrowed considerably. I have a Kodak reference manual/catalogue here from the mid-1990s and the variety and versatility of film is something to behold. And that was just Kodak.
Infrared film? Colour or Black and White? Lith film, Ortho film? Here you go. Kodachrome? Yes, what speed would you like?
So there were things that digital can't easily do now that film could do, but without the film, that value prop has gone, and film cameras versatility has gone with it. If you, we, I, want film photography to thrive and be more than a dead language, we will really need it to do things that digital can't, apart from being slow, expensive and crap in the eyes of many.
What I really need now is a compromise. I want the freedom of my own digital darkroom but I need a fully manual and digital camera with an incredible 4-6 month battery life. So cut everything out of the camera that sucks battery - the LCD screen, the motors, just have the sharpest lens and the best sensor, bring back the optical viewfinder. In fact, I wouldn't even mind having film as a backup, in case the battery runs out.
Sure this will add a bit of weight and all that, but this will appeal to those photographers who love the process, and believe that the end result takes care of itself. I can't help but draw parallels to programming but I'll refrain from doing so.
Being at the right place at the right time, perhaps takes a week of backcountry hiking, so be it. I need a camera that doesn't run out of juice, and has zero lag, for that once in a lifetime shot.
On similar lines, we have auto focus and manual focus, 2 extremes why not a middle ground, assisted focus ?. Nikon AI and AI-P lenses had this ideology, but surely that didn't survive.
Like you I hope someone manages it. Shooting film is so satisfying!
The only other “serious” option - as in not a Holga or something - that I can think of is Leica - but then you’re spending into the tens of thousands of dollars… Also not an SLR but it is interchangeable lens of course.
You can load all the pictures you want there and see them as often as you like, you can share them with others and actually keep them around for your entire life.
The fact that not taking as many as you want is a feature to you, I don't know what to say about that other than if you were responsible for taking photos of any trip we were on together, I would make you scan and share them.
Worth noting that this is seen as competing with the SX-70, which was previously the “serious” choice for Polaroid shooters. The SX-70 was $1300 in today’s dollars at launch, and fully refurbished ones are several hundred dollars now.
My impression based on reading reactions from people in the target market for this camera (ie serious Polaroid enthusiasts) is that the camera looks great and the price point isn’t crazy.
This style of photography is just the complete opposite of what we'll all grown to expect from cameras. We expect them to have microscopic resolution so we can view the photos on 5 inch wide screens. We expect to click one button, and then spend hours tweaking the photo in arbitrary ways until we get an effect that would have been achieved if the aperture was set slightly wider.
The tech is pretty meh and it's probably overpriced, but that's entirely besides the point.
The problem isn't even the price. Usually I don't even look at the price of a device until I know how good it is, then I start considering, whether it is worth it. And only then, separately, I would consider whether it is worth it to me at that price.
The real catch, before one needs to discuss the camera itself, is the film. I had thought that Polaroid stopped making the original films very long ago. They were quite good, but the modern clones less so. Some comments here in the discussion seem to point to the fact, that these new films are quite inferior. And that unfortunately seals the case for me (and probably many others). A camera with original quality Polaroid films would have sold well, disregarding its price. After all every single short is extremely expensive. But unfortunately, this seems to be a technology lost to mankind.
I would honestly expect it to be able to capture digital versions of the images too for that money.
By the way, everybody have a digital instant camera in their pocket. It can also share them on the internet and send them to friends. It has unlimited poses and it can print to film if one really wants to. It can cost way more than 700 euros or less than 100.
Sometimes it is because all taxes are included in the non-US price. Other times it is just profiteering.
I personally don't, but I do know people who like the "flash full power straight to your face and the result is grainy" -thing.
I remember my father bringing back a polaroid camera from work in the eighties. It was amazing. Snap, a blank photo rolls out and a few seconds later the image appears. I can see the magic of that. At the time it was innovative because until then, you had to use film. Wait for the film roll to fill up, it to be developed and printed, etc. There would be days/weeks in between taking the photo and seeing the photo.
I think the process is the bit that's magical and what appeals most to people; not the esthetics. Which are indeed a bit meh. You get a not so great photo instantly. It's not the same when you use a great digital camera to take a photo, then make it look like crap with some filters to emulate the polaroid look, and then print it on a high quality printer. It's much easier and it should replicate the esthetics perfectly. But without the old school process it just isn't the same.
In that case, addons to polaroidize your smartphone (printer for smartphone) seems like a much better idea since you already carry a large set of controls to influence an output in your favorite apps, and already designed with the outset of limited optics (e.g. fake bokeh), and indeed that product already exists. You’ll also have digital copies to reproduce the Polaroids at will (multiple friends/family etc)
> I have a hard time seeing this going anywhere.
I mused about buying one for the bar I frequent. But the price of the unit and the expendables is way too much to shoulder it myself, especially considering the unit could be damaged or stolen.
For the some of the remaining use cases for Polaroids, that's a bug, not a feature.