4 ms·

There 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 a

There 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 ago
The 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 ago
    Sorry 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 ago
    Yes...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.
    - stan_rogers 11y ago
      I can't think of good reason to use Paranoids anymore; digital works immensely better. There's as much translation between media with Polaroids as there is with digital, and you get both quicker turn-around and the ability to do a decent mimic curve with digital. Polaroids had a narrow latitude and poor contrast, so any density at all in the highlights meant you were well within bounds at the top, and anything that wasn't an absolutely solid block of black meant you had scads of shadow detail in your real image. Colour? Faggeddaboudit - if it wasn't clearly purple or something silly like that, the 'Roid wouldn't tell you anything useful, so you'd have to do some sort of weird interpretive dance across your set with a Minolta Color Meter III and a set of gels if you wanted to avoid surprises coming out of the soup. Polaroids also tended to have high to extremely high ISO/ASA numbers (compared to the final film, which in my day tended to be 4x5 or 8x10 transparencies at ISO 50 to 100 that cost somewhere between 10 and 50 dollars an exposure when all was said and done). You could make that up (to a degree) with your shutter shooting under hot lights, but with flash, not so much. And studio flash in those days usually only had a two or three stop adjustment range, so ND gels it was, and hope that they were accurate. All in all, a real pain in the sitting-down bits, and if it weren't for the fact that getting it wrong on the transparency meant a hundred bucks or so (two frames minimum per shot, since dust bunnies can easily make their way into cleaned, de-staticked and practically hermetically sealed film holders no matter what the laws of physics have to say about it) and half a day shot to hell by the time you got it back and dried down it wouldn't have been worth it then either. Did I mention that digital is better in every imaginable way?
      - raihansaputra 11y ago
        yes but it's art. most people would use something that's technically better, but some would prefer to experiment and use older, more unique technology and tools. not saying it's better, but some do prefer polaroids and celluloid films over digital sensor. I for example still use 35mm films for my photos, and there is quite a large number of user and labs around the world to use them properly.
        stan_rogers 11y ago
- kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
  Somewhat ironically, when I was at Kodak, there were some old Polaroid oscilloscope camera backs in the test equipment storage area of my building.
  - peteforde 11y ago
    Ironic because of that time Polaroid won $919 million against Kodak for patent infringement? ;)
- taneq 11y ago
  "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." This was because replacement film was so ridiculously expensive, you ended up 'saving' the shots you had 'in case you needed them' until the film went out of date.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  The killer app was always scientific documentation Specialty film for ID cameras was a big, big deal for Polaroid as well. DMV, passports, company badges. Digital ID photos were the first major digital blow against Polaroid. ID photos don't have to be all that great, as a rule (meaning that early, low-res digital cameras were good enough) and the entities that used ID cameras were perfectly willing to invest a lot of money in a digital camera, if it meant they weren't burning through expensive Polaroid film (even back then, shooting Polaroid film was like lighting $10 or $20 bills on fire). Scientific and legal uses (which do require high-quality imaging) got eaten by digital as well, of course, but ID photos were what first put Polaroid on the rocks.
radicaledward 11y ago
I think the majority of the Impossible Project's marketing is already aimed at the fine art community and instant photography enthusiasts. Many people in those groups had been spending excessive amounts on expired Polaroid film prior to the project's creation. I'm hoping this is a high-end camera. They already have the low-end market covered by the decades of old Polaroids lying around. I have an excellent 600 Business Edition ($30 ebay) and don't really feel the need to upgrade.

brudgers 11y ago

The 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 ago
  Sorry 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 ago
  Yes...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.
  - stan_rogers 11y ago
    I can't think of good reason to use Paranoids anymore; digital works immensely better. There's as much translation between media with Polaroids as there is with digital, and you get both quicker turn-around and the ability to do a decent mimic curve with digital. Polaroids had a narrow latitude and poor contrast, so any density at all in the highlights meant you were well within bounds at the top, and anything that wasn't an absolutely solid block of black meant you had scads of shadow detail in your real image. Colour? Faggeddaboudit - if it wasn't clearly purple or something silly like that, the 'Roid wouldn't tell you anything useful, so you'd have to do some sort of weird interpretive dance across your set with a Minolta Color Meter III and a set of gels if you wanted to avoid surprises coming out of the soup. Polaroids also tended to have high to extremely high ISO/ASA numbers (compared to the final film, which in my day tended to be 4x5 or 8x10 transparencies at ISO 50 to 100 that cost somewhere between 10 and 50 dollars an exposure when all was said and done). You could make that up (to a degree) with your shutter shooting under hot lights, but with flash, not so much. And studio flash in those days usually only had a two or three stop adjustment range, so ND gels it was, and hope that they were accurate. All in all, a real pain in the sitting-down bits, and if it weren't for the fact that getting it wrong on the transparency meant a hundred bucks or so (two frames minimum per shot, since dust bunnies can easily make their way into cleaned, de-staticked and practically hermetically sealed film holders no matter what the laws of physics have to say about it) and half a day shot to hell by the time you got it back and dried down it wouldn't have been worth it then either. Did I mention that digital is better in every imaginable way?
    - raihansaputra 11y ago
      yes but it's art. most people would use something that's technically better, but some would prefer to experiment and use older, more unique technology and tools. not saying it's better, but some do prefer polaroids and celluloid films over digital sensor. I for example still use 35mm films for my photos, and there is quite a large number of user and labs around the world to use them properly.
      - stan_rogers 11y ago
kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
Somewhat ironically, when I was at Kodak, there were some old Polaroid oscilloscope camera backs in the test equipment storage area of my building.
- peteforde 11y ago
  Ironic because of that time Polaroid won $919 million against Kodak for patent infringement? ;)
taneq 11y ago
"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." This was because replacement film was so ridiculously expensive, you ended up 'saving' the shots you had 'in case you needed them' until the film went out of date.
Turing_Machine 11y ago
The killer app was always scientific documentation Specialty film for ID cameras was a big, big deal for Polaroid as well. DMV, passports, company badges. Digital ID photos were the first major digital blow against Polaroid. ID photos don't have to be all that great, as a rule (meaning that early, low-res digital cameras were good enough) and the entities that used ID cameras were perfectly willing to invest a lot of money in a digital camera, if it meant they weren't burning through expensive Polaroid film (even back then, shooting Polaroid film was like lighting $10 or $20 bills on fire). Scientific and legal uses (which do require high-quality imaging) got eaten by digital as well, of course, but ID photos were what first put Polaroid on the rocks.

radicaledward 11y ago

I think the majority of the Impossible Project's marketing is already aimed at the fine art community and instant photography enthusiasts. Many people in those groups had been spending excessive amounts on expired Polaroid film prior to the project's creation. I'm hoping this is a high-end camera. They already have the low-end market covered by the decades of old Polaroids lying around. I have an excellent 600 Business Edition ($30 ebay) and don't really feel the need to upgrade.