8 ms·
Impossible I-1: first new Polaroid camera in 20 years
- Qworg 11y agoI wish there were more shots of the device - that said, I really love the form factor from the front.
- peteforde 11y agoI have been following the Impossible Project's evolution from the earliest days - even travelling to Enschede to tour the factory with Andre back in 2012. I just hope that they adopt the Gillette "cheap razor, expensive blades" approach. In my view they would do well to sell the camera at a loss and make up the margin on the film.
- elsurudo 11y agoReally? As a consumer, I hate that approach with a passion. I see how it makes sense from a business-perspective, but I think people are "onto it" at this point. Instant film is inherently kind of expensive in either case, isn't it?
- edvinbesic 11y agoI agree here. Personally I am much more likely to snap a ton of photos if each shot costs me 10 cents versus 1 dollar.
- colmvp 11y agoWhich I suppose why this device might appeal to people. With this, I could see myself being more thoughtful about the composition and questioning whether or not I want to take this photo
- peteforde 11y agoThat could very well be true! However, Polaroid has never cost 10 cents (adjusted for inflation) and it's essentially impossible (no pun intended) for that to ever happen going forward. What I can say as a medium format film photographer is that having the constraint of knowing each shot has a real cost absolutely forces me to become a much better photographer. You just make each shot count and you'll end up remembering why you took each shot. You'll never end up with 250 shots of a house party with dozens of nearly identical shots ever again. You'll take one shot that captures a moment and then focus on living in that moment. People ask me if I would ever switch to a D-SLR. I smile and inform them that actually I've already upgraded from digital. You'd have to pry my cameras out of my dead hands.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoI think using medium format film forces you to become a better medium format film photographer. I upgraded from a heavy DSLR to an iPhone. Now I can take as many photos as I want without worrying about the weight or the cost. I can concentrate on composition without worrying about focus or aperture. I find taking a long series of spontaneous shots is better for making memories than taking one very thoughtfully composed shot. Sometimes my unconscious combined with luck is a better photographer than I am. Is this better than your approach? Is it worse? Neither. It's all photography.
- peteforde 11y agoI mean, they have contests to determine a solvable answer to this question... :) But you're right. Whatever brings you the most happiness. I wish that you'd tried shooting film before jumping straight to iPhone. I shoot tons of photos on my iPhone, but there's a galaxy of difference between Instagram and the shots I'm proud of. For what it's worth, I was deeply skeptical of film to the point of actively derisive until I tried it. Seemed like cultist holdouts and then I had no choice but to acknowledge that I wasn't seeing the big picture. Send me your address and I'll send you a camera to borrow and some film to try out.
- jeffdubin 11y agoThough I can appreciate where you're coming from, support from the casual consumer equals long-term viability. You need that buy-in if this is going to succeed. I worry that $3/shot film doesn't stand a chance if you don't also have the revenue that comes from the 250 crummy shots at a house party. Maybe there's a compromise point. Perhaps market a far cheaper ($.50/print) but slightly lower quality film alongside a professional, $3/print, higher quality film. That's the difference between this being adopted by the mass market and surviving long-term, versus being a short-lived boutique medium for wealthy artists only.
- peteforde 11y agoHa! I realize now that I must have sounded like a masochist. Here is my reasoning: 1. I love Polaroid and really want the Impossible Project to succeed in the long term. 2. The film is already expensive so perhaps if they increase the number of potential users they will keep the camera cost down and maybe even lower the price of the film. Ultimately, the film is so expensive that I see it as a sort of patronage instead of buying film. Otherwise it would feel gross.
- Apofis 11y agoFucking $23.50 for a pack of 8 films plus S&H I assume. Fuck that shit.
- peteforde 11y agoNobody is happy about the price of film. My suggestion is that you consider how - for a lover of the format - $4 a shot is a cheap price to pay for something that realistically should no longer exist, and that every pack is a kind of artistic patronage... a tithe to a barely profitable entity run by a skeleton crew that rarely ever even meet the folks that appreciate their efforts. It's a specialty item. Unless you lose your mind over banking fees and the price of artisanal chocolate in a boutique, you might be ignoring the bigger picture: no price is too great for something you love. Shipping new hardware is expensive, risky and very hard... but shipping old hardware is just bonkers because there's no practical upside by any typical investment standard.
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- Turing_Machine 11y agoThat's actually well within lines of what Polaroid film used to cost, if you adjust for inflation. The last time I bought any (late 80s/early 90s) it was about ten bucks a roll. I'm actually surprised they can sell it that cheap, given that they don't have anything like the economy of scale that Polaroid had in its heyday.
- Animats 11y agoThey're more an "expensive razor, expensive blades" operation. An 8-picture film pack is $24. An SX-70 camera is $470.
- paulmd 11y ago\sigh\ Trust me, you do not want your camera to be cheap. Well-engineered cameras are like putting an IBM Model M keyboard versus a Dell dome-switch keyboard. Not only will the better keyboard last forever, but it'll be vastly more effective during its entire lifespan. You do not want your tools to be cheap, folks.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ck2 11y agoStory of "impossible" Polaroid film, bought their factory! http://techland.time.com/2012/04/07/the-story-of-the-death-and-rebirth-of-polaroid-film/ http://techland.time.com/2012/04/07/the-story-of-the-death-a...
- walrus01 11y agocoming soon to bearded skinny pants hipsters everywhere!!! don't forget your portable mechanical typewriter so you can write your memoirs at the local coffee shop.
- peteforde 11y agoI am the OP so I can't downvote this, but man you have a crap attitude about the things other people are passionate about. What exactly makes your hobbies more legitimate than someone else's? I'm a fat 37 y/o serial entrepreneur that hasn't had facial hair since my 20s. I do like decent coffee, though. I guess that brings up my hipster quotient.
- ky738 11y agolmfao made me giggle m7
- Naga 11y agoThis is a great idea. I work at an electronics retailer and teenage girls go crazy for Instax. I bet this will be even bigger.
- wingerlang 11y agoThis camera was what popped into my mind. What is the difference?
- sarreph 11y agoI agree from anecdotal evidence from family and friends. I think this is a classic case of HN demographic bias, as (this is just a guess) but I imagine there is a dearth of materialistic/hip teenagers using HN and as a result a lot of the comments here have failed to recognise the importance of such a large market segment in reviving an original format. 'Old-school' and retro devices are somewhat coveted by the youth of today, and therefore I don't think the arguments based on digital format and technical superiority hold much water when a bunch of kids are gonna go nuts over getting a change to use a Polaroid again.
- Naga 11y agoThis is a great idea. I work at an electronics retailer and teenage girls go crazy for Instax. I bet this will be even bigger.
- iamleppert 11y agoThere have been a few of these tried before. I actually bought one and a few cartridges of film a few years back. I took it to a few parties and out one night and it was a lot of fun taking pictures with people. Result? After the novelty wore off (and it did so quickly) I went back to using my phone to take pictures. If I were them I'd recognize this and either adapt my marketing to focus on niche retailers, tourist destinations and the holiday seasons.
- brudgers 11y agoThe consumer grade novelty wore off Polaroids much the same way in the 1970's. By the mid 1980's the cameras were available for $12 at the drug store and a standard last minute gift. It as common for the included film pack to be the only film that ever went in as the years whiled away with the camera in a drawer. The killer app was always scientific documentation with the intent of making sure there was a photograph that captured what would be important later. Putting a Polaroid back on a technical camera was another way of using technical cameras to do what they were made to do.
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago> The killer app was always scientific documentation Law enforcement and investigations, too. For a while Polaroids were the detective's camera of choice. But they died out quickly, just like consumer usages. Weren't they big on film sets to check lighting, too?
- brudgers 11y agoSorry for not being clear, I intended "scientific" to modify "documentation" and connote a set of standards for evaluating claims toward objectivity rather than a formal set of academic disciplines.
- zdean 11y agoYes...up until around 2005 I would routinely see them on photo shoots (that's when digital started to replace film for a lot of pros). Now, I think they're used but only on really large shoots...smaller ones do ok with light meters and previews on screens/cameras.
- peteforde 11y agoOn a tangential note, I challenge you to find a better product video than what Land had Charles and Ray Eames produce for the SX-70. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaiq_ZZ_eM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaiq_ZZ_eM It was the same team that did the famous "Powers of 10" short a few years later. It included a rousing voiceover by Philip Morrison, an MIT prof who worked on the Manhattan Project but later became a major proponent of nuclear nonproliferation. This video has a special place in my heart. It effortlessly moves from a commercial to an instructional video to an impressively coherent discussion of how it works before ultimately explaining that the camera is a tool intended to further increase the true potential of humankind. You can laugh all you want, but years later I cannot watch this without tearing up.
- addled 11y agoThat was really, really well done. Thank you so much for sharing.
- peteforde 11y agoOne insight that just now occurred to me is that there's some serious political posturing at work in this video. Specifically, film in general was strongly biased to favour Caucasian skin tones. It used to be incredibly difficult to take good colour photos of black people. It's clear that Land wanted to demonstrate that the insanely great dynamic range of Polaroid film was perfectly capable of bringing photography to the black demographic.
- ptaipale 11y ago>Specifically, film in general was strongly biased to favour Caucasian skin tones I find it odd to call this "biased". It's about physics: due to light intensity, it will be generally easier to photograph (capture on film or digital sensors) objects that reflect moderate amounts of light with some contrast, than objects that reflect very little light with little contrast.
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- Isamu 11y agoI'm glad, I had a Polaroid once too. They were pretty awesome. The original folding SX-70 was amazing when it came out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Camera
- Aelinsaar 11y agoI don't understand why people are supposed to want this, other than nostalgia. "We care about analog..." and all of that sounds nice, but why? Is this like some people still preferring vacuum tubes for certain applications, because there is an objective benefit? Is this just nostalgia?
- themartorana 11y agoHey, nostalgia got us Instagram, and Polaroid would love a piece of that billion dollar market.
- peteforde 11y agoNo: instant photography is genuinely fun and interesting. It leaves a real artifact of a moment. As formats go, the square Polaroid just clicked for people. Tempted to throw down some cliched McLuhan quotes but instead I'll just point out that Fuji Instax continues to be a big seller with teenage girls who wouldn't know a Polaroid camera if it attacked them. I guess another answer is that we still have supermarkets and restaurants even though Soylent has been shipping for quite some time, now.
- Aelinsaar 11y agoI don't see digital photography as the "Soylent" of photography, but maybe I'm missing something. After all, your ability to print a digital photograph is not in doubt. I didn't know about the Instax though, so whatever I think, there is clearly a market.
- akurilin 11y agoOn a related note, has there been much progress in the past 20 years in the digital SLR space (edit: for consumers / photographers)? Mirrorless is interesting, Lytro was a cool concept but mostly fizzled out (edit: in the consumer space). Is there much to be excited about going forward?
- deepGem 11y agoLytro hasn't fizzled out. They have just shifted their focus from consumer cameras to high-end cinema cameras.
- akurilin 11y agoYou're right, I was specifically referring to their consumer camera model.
- hrnnnnnn 11y agoThere's been a lot of effort recently (past 5 years at least) on making sensors ever more sensitive to low light levels. This is great for taking pictures indoors, at night, and for astrophotography.
- akurilin 11y agoYeah in my experience most "innovation" has been on the quantitative "more of x" side of things: better ISO, more pixels, more shots per second, 4k video etc.
- tlrobinson 11y agoWhat's the point of Bluetooth? I'd think part of the appeal of a product like this would be its simplicity.
- c-slice 11y agoWhat's interesting is this comes weeks after Fujifilm announced that they would stop manufacturing their polaroid 100 film, which fit larger body polaroid cameras. Really smart move on the part of the impossible project.
- peteforde 11y agoWhat do you mean by that? Radically different format. Still sad to see C100 go.
- noobie 11y agoOn a tangent but I just got a small pop-up saying "You can only ship orders to Tunisia from our EU shop.". Why don't all the stores have this? Instead of letting me find out at checkout that they don't ship to my country they could just let me know from the start.
- feintruled 11y agoIt's funny, when digital cameras first appeared I considered them somewhat magic, a brave new world of technology replacing the outmoded analogue. But recently, my kids went round to a relative's house, where they had an old polaroid camera. The sight of this ancient artifact spewing out a self-appearing physical picture blew their minds far more than digital ever blew mine! They had no frame of reference for such a device. I look forward to showing them cassettes and vinyl!
- corecoder 11y agoWill they (and everyone else) ever learn that modal popups cause bounces? I access the page from Europe, and this annoying popup obscures the page and asks me if I'm sure I'm in the right place. Hint taken: hit back.