My 600SE has been largely out for action for years, with only a trickle of film available. Results were predictable when Polaroid and Fuji peel-apart film were available.
The modern Polaroid film is anything but predictable or even vaguely good, especially for the astronomical prices. Zink gives about the same qualities.
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.
As a lifetime Polaroid fan, I would disagree. I think this product signals that results of their death were greatly exaggerated.
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.
Is there another option out there or are you referring to the lomography back? I shot pack film for many years and switched to Instax Wide when that ran out, but I miss using a camera with manual focus.
600€ for an obsolete-era machine that sells imperfection as a "feature" (probably because they don't have anything else to sell, as even their website's sample photos are mediocre quality) that many will probably use once or twice and get bored and jump back to their iPhone/DSLR/mirrorless anyway?
I don't think you understand the selling point of these.
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.
I hate using my phone as a camera. I own a digital camera for that reason. I don't own a good photo print because they are either ridiculously expensive or crap and I haven't found the good-cheap (of the "pick two" triangle) yet. I'm the market for this. I'd much rather keep my photos offline.
I really hate perfect pictures with high resolution of people. You can distinguish all the little imperfections of their faces. Also, any digital picture that I take with the phone is never ever viewed again nor printed.
I wouldn’t pay 600 for the polaroid, but I get the selling point.
I used to be a professional photographer, and have been out of the game for about 10 years. For the last 15 years of my profession, I really embraced the digital SLR in my work.
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.
The price is to much, €600 is just crazy, but something like €100 - €120 for the Fuji Instax is a pretty good value for money. My five year old and her friends love being able to snap a few photos and her friend can have one to take home. Similarly we use them for vacation photos that she can bring to the kindergarten, when they talk about what they did during the summer.
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.
this is clearly targeted at the segment that wants something nicer than the dwindling stock of refurb SX70s, but is too cheap for Mint's SLR670. so the only thing that surprises me is it's not an SLR.
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.
> the foldable sx70 is just too nice. who wants to carry around a brick?
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.
I really hope that in my lifetime, and hopefully very soon, manual SLRs make a comeback. If not a come back then started manufacturing of the old greats again. I loved the photography but not the disposable digital photography. No, I was never an expert photographer and I don’t even want to be one. I just loved taking photos and the whole process of it and the fact that you couldn’t just take any number of photos you want.
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.
I understand the unlikelihood of this, but to really capitalize on the film craze they need to produce a higher “resolution” instant film. Old peel away film was fantastically high quality particularly when paired with a genuine glass lens (most current instant film cameras have a plastic lens). Improving the lens can only go so far without improving the film stock.
If it wants to compete with digital, sure. That's not the point though. There's a world of "low-fi" photography that's closer to art than modern photography has become.
You can 3d print a modified instax wide back for some medium format cameras. Hasselblad has always had an instant film back with some minor modifications. The photos look amazing.
There are other much cheaper models. I might not be finding it, but their site doesn't make it immediately apparent what the differences are to justify the huge difference in price: https://www.polaroid.com/en_us/collections/instant-cameras
This one has full manual exposure settings (not available in any previous Polaroid integral camera, as far as I know), plus shutter priority and aperture priority, continuous autofocus using LiDAR, external flash sync, a better lens, ability to use both 600 and SX-70 film, a “real” light meter, a much more sophisticated viewfinder, and probably something I’m forgetting. It really is significantly more capable than the existing, cheaper models.
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.
I, for one, love the innovation in film technology. Yes, most of it is not new - printing polaroids has been around for decades and the rest of the camera looks like it was salvaged from digital cameras in the last 10 years.
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.
As my farther had and used a polaroid camera, seeing this announcement made me curious. The camera definitely looks nice though its ancestors were definitely easier to carry thanks to their folding capacity. On the other side, you wouldn't get any of those cameras for their size today. So a bit more bulk might be ok, it also saves you from fiddeling with the mechanism.
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.
Conversely, a digital camera that at a 700 Euro pricepoint also captures images on film?
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.
I was shocked to see the price tag on this. On the other hand, I could see it being used as mostly a marketing tool to provide an aspirational product to essentially set an anchor price that makes all their other lines feel more affordable. I honestly found that when I looked at their product line, all of a sudden, a $150 instant camera felt "affordable" after seeing the $600 one. I won't be buying one, but this had some small effect on me.
I have a hard time seeing this going anywhere. Features of lens sharpness and manual controls seem at odds with the intent of spontaneity and the lack of medium quality, so much of your effort is thrown away once you print. In none of their samples for aperture/shutter/auto did I even see the typical differences between the modes such as bokeh or motion softness due to let us say limited sensor size and print quality. Or their samples were just poor as showcases.
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)
My daughter has a previous model. I came to the conclusion that this camera is not for consumers, rather, maybe useful for events or pubs to photograph participants and to immediately place on an event wall. Though I've never actually seen the device used for this purpose, I honestly can not find another use case where another device already popular on some market is not a better fit.
It’s good that these kinds of instant-photo cameras are still available. They are essential not only in forensics investigations, but also any other field where photographic inimitability is required; where the photo itself cannot be intercepted or altered or faked prior to its final physical copy, and where that physical copy can be trusted to be an accurate representation.
the price per photo is what deters me from buying one. You will end up thinking twice (or thrice) before snapping an instant photo, because.. "is this really worth $1?".
Having that said, I've seen you can buy these in bulk and the price goes down.
The fact that this exists has rekindled my hope for new, mass-manufactured 35mm cameras. There are plenty of good used ones around, but repairs can be so expensive (if you can find someone willing to service your camera).
vr46|2 years ago
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.
kotaKat|2 years ago
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.
dtagames|2 years ago
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.
jnovek|2 years ago
snom380|2 years ago
can16358p|2 years ago
No thanks.
PartiallyTyped|2 years ago
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.
igetspam|2 years ago
bowsamic|2 years ago
tkiolp4|2 years ago
GoofballJones|2 years ago
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.
mrweasel|2 years ago
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.
tomjen3|2 years ago
I mean I just go done scanning all my predigital photos because analog photos suck. Why would anybody want this?
supermatt|2 years ago
ruined|2 years ago
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
doctorpangloss|2 years ago
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.
crossroadsguy|2 years ago
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.
orange_joe|2 years ago
syndicatedjelly|2 years ago
shiftpgdn|2 years ago
system16|2 years ago
armadsen|2 years ago
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.
syndicatedjelly|2 years ago
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.
_ph_|2 years ago
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.
superchroma|2 years ago
I would honestly expect it to be able to capture digital versions of the images too for that money.
manuelmagic|2 years ago
pmontra|2 years ago
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.
armadsen|2 years ago
iancarroll|2 years ago
billfruit|2 years ago
turndown|2 years ago
allenu|2 years ago
theshrike79|2 years ago
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.
oh_sigh|2 years ago
jug|2 years ago
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)
dotancohen|2 years ago
fragmede|2 years ago
For the some of the remaining use cases for Polaroids, that's a bug, not a feature.
DGCA|2 years ago
tap-snap-or-nap|2 years ago
rekabis|2 years ago
Jemm|2 years ago
kkarimi|2 years ago
EGreg|2 years ago
somishere|2 years ago
nunodonato|2 years ago
bichiliad|2 years ago
system2|2 years ago
billfruit|2 years ago
macintosh-hd|2 years ago
ricardobayes|2 years ago
beesyrup|2 years ago
manuelmagic|2 years ago
azhenley|2 years ago
what-no-tests|2 years ago
BugsJustFindMe|2 years ago