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.
Interesting video. Where did this video play? I'm curious because a 10 minute video in the 70s seems like it would have extremely limited distribution.
This video is great. It's made me really interested in the new camera, and the relative lack of actual information presented about it, in contrast to what's presented in that video, is frustrating. Are there more details available somewhere?
One 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.
>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.
> Yes, film wasn't sensitive enough for black skin
This was not a constraint of physics or chemistry: Kodak knew it, and they didn't care much for black skin. This was bias because they could fix it, but didn't. Fortunately, Kodak did ended up caring for other brown things: Kathy Connor, an executive at Kodak, told Roth the company didn’t develop a better film for rendering different gradations of brown until economic pressure came from a very different source: Kodak’s professional accounts. Two of their biggest clients were chocolate confectioners, who were dissatisfied with the film’s ability to render the difference between chocolates of different darknesses. “Also,” Connor says, “furniture manufacturers were complaining that stains and wood grains in their advertisement photos were not true to life.”
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.
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.
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.
"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.
> 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?
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.
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?
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.
I was resonding to the idea that people were still using Polaroids for tests on big shoots, not using it for their primary medium. (To my knowledge, only the Type 55 pos/neg was ever really used as a "conventional" film, though there were several people using pull-aparts such as 669 for one-off "fine art" transfer prints. Yes, other Polaroids were used for their particular look, often rephotographed for reproduction. But for the most part, it was all about the "instant", whether that was for mementos, home-made porn or Polachromes for putting together a quick presentation for the boardroom.)
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.
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.
I 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.
On 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.
It'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!
Will 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.
I 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.
Really? 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?
Ha! 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.
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.
I 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.
I 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.
Though 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.
I'd argue that part of the appeal of instant film is that it's not a mass market product any more. There's no way it could compete with the billion smartphone cameras every single person at that house party already has in their pocket 24/7.
The appeal is novelty, nostalgia, simplicity, tactility, etc. It's in the same category as vinyl records.
Which 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
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.
That'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.
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.
On 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?
Yeah 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.
I 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?
No: 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.
I 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.
What'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.
I 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.
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.