The return of Polaroid

January 28, 2009

It seems that an Austrian businessman and Polaroid enthusiast has purchased the polaroid factory in Amsterdam and hired 11 of its former employees to kick production back up.   They’re partnered with Ilford to start reproducing the SX-70 and 600 line of film.   There was some talk about Ilford licensing the B&W line of Polaroid products when the company went under so this seems like a natural development.

I have fond memories of the 600 line of Polaroid.  That was my grandmother’s camera as she didn’t care to fiddle around with the Canon AE-1 that my grandfather sported.  I don’t think she had any personal fondness for the Polaroid, it just seemed easier for her to handle with her constant companion, the cigarette, in one hand.   When my grandfather recently died we pulled fading Polaroids of my family through the years out of picture frames in his study.  My childhood and the unfortunate hairstyles of my early youth like so many others of my generation are preserved in that little square of instant film.

The Impossible Project states that they are not trying to reproduce the classic SX-70 and 600 lines of integral film but rather to develop new products which would replace these products and integrate with existing cameras.   This is important as Polaroid has not surrendered their patents and they won’t expire until 2019 or so.   One of the key players in this project is Florian Kaps who formerly managed the Lomographic Society so they have someone who has been successful at maintaining a broad userbase for film products.

I’m not wild about this project and it seems that I’m not alone in feeling a bit tepid about the reintroduction of a compatible line of instant film. Unlike Mr. Johnson who penned the boing boing article I think there’s a distinct difference between an analog product and a digital recreation of the look and feel of the analog product. What I am concerned about is that 600 film was an incredibly wasteful and not very well designed product.

There’s a battery in every pack of film to start with.   Each film pack is a fairly complicated piece of manufacturing as opposed to your normal roll of 35mm film which is simply a metal cylinder with a cap on either end and a spindle in the center.  Your standard roll of 35mm film is  relatively simple to manufacture to the point where someone is building a coating machine in their garage. More importantly, 35mm is a non-proprietary format.   Polaroid only works with Polaroid cameras.

From an engineering perspective I would have expected them to start with peel apart film rather than the integral film.  Fuji makes their own line of peel apart film but its fairly limited next to Polaroid’s offerings.   While I never had the chance to work with it, the demise of Type 55 film upset me a great deal as I had hoped to move into large format photography at some point.    Peel apart film is much simpler to manufacture and does not require the use of a dedicated device nor was it ever packaged with a frigging battery.    The problem is that it doesn’t have the cultural cache that the 600 format offered.   No click, whirr, and spitting out of a white rectangle which slowly blossoms into a photo.   Waiting for the Polaroid to develop was where all the fun came from.

At the base of it, my problem is with the format.  You’re locked into the hardware.   With peel apart film you have plenty of 3rd party backs so you can use it on a large number of large and medium format bodies including the celebrated Holgaroid.   So the good people The Impossible Project are faced with developing a product that can only be used with a Polaroid camera, most of which are probably in the trash by now following the official demise of the Polaroid line of film.   I just don’t see this as a winning business plan and I think the product was a stinky idea to begin with.

I’m all for instant film, but I think the energy could have been better spent creating a line of peel apart which isn’t locked into proprietary hardware and has an existing market which isn’t fueled by nostalgia and hipster gizmo lust.  However this is from a purely practical viewpoint and the Polaroid was never a practical device.  It was a fun one, it was easy, and yes, it was part of my childhood.  I admire their energy and wish them the best but I don’t know if this was the best product to ressurect.

Posted in Uncategorized