Polaroid Lovers Try To Revive Its Instant Film 443
Maximum Prophet nods a NY Times piece on a Dutch group living the retro dream: they are trying to bring back Polaroid film. This group has the machinery to make the film packs, but needs to recreate the chemicals. Polaroid Inc. stopping making the specialized chemicals years ago, after having stockpiled what they would need for their last production runs. "They want to recast an outdated production process in an abandoned Polaroid factory for an age that has fallen for digital pictures because they think people still have room in their hearts for retro photography that eschews airbrushing or Photoshop. 'This project is about building a very interesting business to last for at least another decade,' said Florian Kaps, the Austrian entrepreneur behind the effort [in Enschede, The Netherlands]. 'It is about the importance of analog aspects in a more and more digital world. ... If everyone runs in one direction [i.e. digital photography], it creates a niche market in the other.'"
No, probably not (Score:4, Informative)
If everyone runs in one direction [i.e. digital photography], it creates a niche market in the other.
Yeah, I'm sure the horse buggy manufacturers tried to claim something similar after Ford started to ramp up production. But we're not talking about music genres here - we're talking about a new technology that's made the old technology completely obsolete.
I'm old enough to have used a "Polaroid Swinger" back when I was a kid. Sure, they were a lot of fun - but the tech has passed them by.
Re:Digital Retro? (Score:5, Informative)
If I were Polaroid, I'd make a system for printing Digital Photos to REAL photo paper, and not using crappy Inkjet or Color Laser, for the home market.
You mean like this product [amazon.com] that's been around for years?
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:2, Informative)
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tag? (Score:1, Informative)
Probably because in today's Internet-connected world there's always the fear that any digital picture can wind up online, whether deliberately or accidentally, whereas a Polaroid picture is unlikely to leave the possession of the one who took it (or who had it taken for them) and thus be more likely to exist in the first place
Re:Tag? (Score:5, Informative)
Amateur pornographers often used Polaroids to avoid having to develop their film at a store.
Especially useful for test shots with new models/actors. Decent enough results, you don't have to worry about the photomat guy making extra copies and selling them, a lot more cost-effective than contracting out to a more trusted source for developing (since most photos will be trashed / paper clipped to an application for a pro photo/film shoot), and a lot easier to say "here are all the photos" when you land a contract / the model/actor bails out.
Also useful if it's pics of you and your significant others that you don't intend to sell/distribute, and of course, for anything that is super freaky, borderline illegal, or illegal.
Large format photography (Score:5, Informative)
Polaroids can still be useful for previewing exposures in large-format photography [wikipedia.org], which is still a film world. They simply don't make 4x5" digital sensors, period.
Using a digital camera to take a test shot can be useful in the same situation, but that means using a separate camera, from a slightly different angle, potentially different field of view, etc.
Serious artistic interest (Score:3, Informative)
One thing about the "SX70" process (with the fully contained chemicals in a bubble at the edge of the film), the dyes used were unusually stable and long lasting for the time. There was some serious artistic interest for that reason.
Large-format Polaroid photography was all the rage during the late 80s and early 90s. Mostly because it was insanely expensive (hundreds of dollars per exposure.) Again, it had a unique look and feel that was of some artistic interest.
Since there is still quite a bit of large format activity out there, maybe they can make a go of it. Polaroid only tanked because it was managed by incompetents, not because of failures of their technology.
Re:Tag? (Score:3, Informative)
Close, but a missing detail --
With film, unless you had your own dark room setup, you'd have to turn over the roll of film to someone else to develop -- meaning they could either (1) refuse to give you the prints, (2) report you to police if they didn't like your photos, or (3) make copies. There are photo labs that cater to artists that might not be as much as a problem, but you wouldn't want to drop your roll off at the local drugstore or "(x) Hour Photo" place at the mall.
Polaroids didn't have this problem for this particular use.
Re:Tag? (Score:4, Informative)
Or they are remembering one of the uses Poloroids had back in their heyday was taking pics in the bedroom.
Many a kid in the 70-80's was introduced to a world of nightmares and a desire to bleach their eyes by discovering their folks' "hidden" shoebox of memories...
You can fake a Polaroid (Score:2, Informative)
I once saw a "print to Polaroid" that let you print to Polaroid film the same as you would to paper.
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:5, Informative)
Way to go... (Score:3, Informative)
'Polaroid' is, of course, a trademark of the Polaroid corporation.
'Instamatic' is a trademark of the Kodak corporation, and refers to 100 and 126 film cameras - not instant anything except maybe loading. The film required processing in the conventional way.
These two terms cannot be used to represent a single product. Ask either corporation. Or former users.
Way to mix up trademarks... Somewhere someone is writhing in agony.
Re:Large format photography (Score:5, Informative)
4"x5" digital sensors (Score:2, Informative)
Digital backs for 4"X5" cameras are common, but they shave a bit off the edges. A quick search showed 3"x4" with well over 3000dpi is not uncommon.
Depending on your needs, a relatively-low-resolution digital back for a 4x5 can be adequate for proofing.
If there isn't a relatively inexpensive, low-resolution, nearly-full-bleed 4"x5" "proofing back" available now, there probably will be one as soon as the manufacturers realize there is a market for one now that customers can't use Polaroids for test prints any more.
Besides, even at 1200 dpi, a 4x5 image is still over 27 megapixels, which is a great image if you don't crop it too much or blow it up to wall-size.
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:1, Informative)
It isn't just heartstrings, there are a number of artists that use Polaroids for various reasons, much like people use Holgas, or Lomos, or pinhole cameras, and so on.
Re:Way to go... (Score:4, Informative)
'Polaroid' is, of course, a trademark of the Polaroid corporation.
'Instamatic' is a trademark of the Kodak corporation
I think he was trying to make a joke, because Kodak and Polaroid get along about as well as Linux and SCO. "The great Kodak / Polaroid lawsuit". In summary, Kodak didn't just lose but was utterly spanked, and could no longer sell their instant film, and had to mail refunds to the owners of their now unusable cameras. I think everyone alive in the 80s either personally junked their Kodak or was related to someone whom junked their Kodak. I remember goodwill stores had shelves of them... It was fun to take them apart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_camera [wikipedia.org]
Re:Other purposes: scientific devices (Score:1, Informative)
the only option is to buy another Laue diffraction machine to replace the one we have
That's hardly your only option. You can modify the machine to use a digital sensor instead of film. There are off the shelf sensors:
http://sales.hamamatsu.com/en/products/solid-state-division/x-ray-flat-panel-sensor.php [hamamatsu.com]
so it's mostly a matter of choosing the right one and doing a bit of mechanical engineering to mount it in place of your film camera.
Re:Large format photography (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Chainmail still has uses - indeed! (Score:3, Informative)
Chainmail still has uses
Indeed. Chainmail got me laid!
(don't ask. :)
Re:Properties of Polaroid films (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit. The negatives in Polaroid film are silver-halide emulsions just like any standard film. They have the same grain limitations that other films do. A few seconds of googling turned this up:
http://polaroids.theskeltons.org/film3.htm [theskeltons.org]
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think anybody really understands the reason Polaroid is still a popular medium. I'll give you a hint, it's got nothing to do with any of the bloody technical aspects of the film. It's not about megapixels or instant gratification. More than anything, Polaroids have a quirkiness and charm to them that isn't reproduced by anything else.
I'm a hobbyist photographer and even though most of my gear is digital, there's something to be said for some of the old school methods. Every once in a while I'll go out on a nice day and run a roll or two of slide film through my camera. Generally I'll take just one prime lens out for the afternoon and I won't finish until I'm out of film. Send the film out for development, wait several days, and get back about 98% crap. There's no cloning, airbrushing, leveling or curving. The exposure has to be spot on or it'll turn our too dark to see through or virtually transparent. Why do I do this? The one or two keepers you do get are something special. The tonal range, the color saturation: there's nothing digital that can compete.
Polaroids are even neater. Sure you can get functionally the same thing with any consumer point and shoot digital camera (take picture, check LCD, print later), but in comparison, the images you get can only be described as bland and mechanical. Not to mention watching your picture develop almost magically as you shake it. It's a great date idea too if you can find the equipment. Unfortunately, the film is now prohibitively expensive for shooting casually.
There are still enthusiasts who scour ebay only for long-expired Polaroids because of the unique color shifts that they give. There's also unexpired film still selling on ebay for well over $1/exposure. That's for a 3" square image that's got virtually no redeeming technical qualities to it. Again, there's NOTHING digital that compares.
It may sound hokey, but TFA puts it pretty bluntly:
âoeIt used to be something you use for a lighting test,â Ms. Bukowska said. âoeNow it is the art itself.â
Re:Livestock feed? (Score:2, Informative)
No, it's always been unrealistic.
The reason that cars took off in the way they did was not just because they were more convenient. One of the main reasons the car replaced the horse was due to cleanliness. In large cities, (which already existed at the turn of the century) the pollution problem of all those animals sharing space with humans was a major major headache, and had only been getting worse as the industrial revolution took off and cities became even more crowded as people moved out of the country and into the city for work.
Motor Vehicles came along at just the right time to relieve the animal burden and speed up transportation of food and materials to the growing cities. The steam trains of the day simply could not transport enough people, food, and materials. Even if they could, once in the city all that stuff still had to be moved around. In some cases many miles across the heart of the city. Horses and Oxen could not do it.
So even then there was no going back. We had reached the limit of what beasts of burden could provide. We were at the end of that stage in our development as a species and as a society and needed to move onward and upward away from messy animals.
While it's fun to play "what if" and have nice romantic fantasies about what might have been, the fact is that things played out the way they did because they COULD NOT have played out in any other way and have our society exist as it does today. The steps we took were critically necessary that they happen WHEN and HOW they did. No other option was viable. Sorry.
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:3, Informative)
If you use the camera in your cellphone, you can email the picture to your friend, and they can receive it on their cellphone moments later. That's pretty instant, and not only have you shared the picture, you've made an exact duplicate of it so you can both have it. Can't do that with a Polaroid.
What we need are either better quality cameras built into cellphones, or broadband cellphone chips built into digital cameras. The latter is a more viable option; good cameras are too bulky to be reasonable cellphones, while the cellphone electronics can be easily fit into a decent camera.
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:2, Informative)
Does anyone remember the superior Kodak system? (Score:4, Informative)
Polaroids had a flat glossy surface. Touch the picture and the fingerprint permanently ruined the photo. Kodak's photos had a textured surface which rejected fingerprints.
Polaroids had a cheesy paper frame. Handling the photo often caused it to disintegrate. Kodak's photos were monolithic plastic slabs--the picture was just an area of color in the middle of the slab.
So why didn't Kodak's instant film take over the market. Well, what do you think a company, who was losing the race due to an inferior product, did? That's right, into court they went and lawyers prevented the technology from improving.
Remind you of any other analogous situations?
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:3, Informative)
Horses eat whether you ride them or not, cars just rot slowly if you don't maintain them. That's the real reason. Also, cars seldom panic and run down passersby without being told to do so.
Same thing happened with Analog Tape (Score:2, Informative)
Memento would not be the same... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Tattoos for memory restoration (Score:1, Informative)
trust the skull
just don't trust Sammy Jenkins
Bet (Score:2, Informative)
I'm willing to bet that you cannot create an image by any process that, projected on a screen, will fool me into believing it's a Kodachrome 64 slide.
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:5, Informative)
It all depends on the parameters under which you measure it, though. At 10-15 mph, a horse is probably much more efficient. But what about at 55mph? What about after travelling for 150 miles? Can a horse draw a carriage at speed for three hours? Besides [wikipedia.org], muscle is only 14-27% efficient, so it's likely that there are cars that are more efficient than a horse drawn carriage, even at horse attainable speeds and distances.
Re:They're called digital cameras (Score:3, Informative)
Also, to a limited extent the megapixels do matter, but only if you are trying to make larger prints, once you are up around 10 megapixels, they stop mattering as much and the optics of the camera start to matter a lot more.