Rise and Fall...and Rise(?) of the Polaroid Camera

I read an article recently by Georgia Fitzpatrick on, helium.com on the birth and death of the Polaroid Instant Camera. It was significant to me personally because I remember when my mother bought our Polaroid camera (The Swinger) in the early 1970’s. Georgia tells us that the Polaroid Corporation was owned by a man called Edwin Land, and that the Polaroid Land Camera was first produced in 1947. (As a child, I always thought there must have been an underwater version too, why else would they specify that this was a Land camera?) It’s difficult to imagine now just how significant these cameras were in their day.







The Polaroid Swinger


Gratification Delay



With all other cameras, you took your roll of film to the local chemist for developing and it could take anything up to three weeks to get the photos back. This was Gratification Delay in action. But with the Polaroid, you took your picture, pulled it out of the back of the camera and watched it slowly develop in front of your eyes. Edwin Land sold us Instant Gratification when he sold us the Polaroid Instant Camera. But he didn’t stop there. The Polaroid Corporation also invented the Pack Film and integral film cameras. Instead of fiddling around with rolls of film, threading them through and around spindles, now you could just load this flat box of film and battery into your camera, and not only that, it also automatically ejected the film from the front to the camera after you took your shot. The most popular of these models was the SX-70 which had an SLR lens (that means that when you look through the viewfinder you’re actually seeing through the lens, by means of mirrors and prisms, rather than slightly to one side or above the lens, as in other cameras). This camera was way out of the price range of our family in the 1970’s, but I still see them around today. In fact Georgia Fitzpatrick tells us that you can still pick one up second-hand on ebay for between forty and one hundred euro, and although the SX-70 film is no longer available, you can use the type 600 film with the addition of a ND-Filter. ( What Georgia doesn’t mention though is that the Polaroid Corporation stopped producing all film in 2008, and that the last batch of Polaroid Film passed its use-by date on 16th October 2009. I know, I’m such a nerd. What can I say?)


Histroy


Family history repeated itself in my case in the late 1990’s when Santa Clause left my daughter a Polaroid Spicecam. (Spice as in Spice Girls) She didn’t specifically ask for such a camera, but Santa Clause had a kind of a soft spot for Polaroid Cameras, you see. Georgia tells us that the Corporation when on to produce two more SLR cameras, the imaginatively named SLR 680 and the SLR 690 which, she says, produce excellent quality images. Unfortunately though for them, the digital camera was already gaining popularity, and spelling the demise of the Polaroid. But, she says, instant photography is enjoying some kind of revival, and by the amount of articles and blogs on the subject to be found on the web, I think she’s right. There’re campaigns to “Bring Back the Polaroid” , an endeavour called “The Impossible Project” which aims to do just that, (Bit defeatist tho, don’t you think, with a name like that?) and even the Urban Outfitters shops are selling old stock Polaroid Cameras.



Take a look at the following sites for more information and some interesting debates on the subject: (Well, interesting to me anyway.)
http://www.helium.com/items/134524-the-history-of-instant-photography-and-polaroid.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/blog/index.php?/archives/290-Bring-Back-The-Polaroid!.html
http://blog.urbanoutfitters.com/features/polaroid


Postscript: Found the following press release on http://www.the-impossible-project.com/ :


The Impossible Project inspires Polaroid to re-launch Instant Cameras


We are pleased to herewith announce a history making cooperation between Polaroid and The Impossible Project:



As we have created quite some buzz about Analog Instant Photography over the past 12 months, the Polaroid licensee - The Summit Global Group - now can't resist any longer and announced at a press conference on October 13th in Hongkong that they will re-launch some of the most famous Polaroid Instant Cameras.Therefore they are commissioning The Impossible Project to develop and produce a limited edition of Polaroid branded Instant Films in the middle of 2010.



The Impossible Project is proud and excited that its ambitions and all the relentless work that has already been invested are now becoming the foundation for Polaroid's comeback as a producer of Instant Cameras.Large-scale production and worldwide sale of The Impossible Project's new integral film materials under its own brand will already start in the beginning of 2010 - with a brand new and astonishing black and white Instant Film and the first colour films to follow in the course of the year.

…so, they’re not so defeatist after all!