Polaroid, which brought the world instant photography before there was such a phrase, is closing its last two film manufacturing plants. To be honest, until seeing the news bit, I thought Polaroid disappeared 9 years ago when Sony and Olympus began pushing digital photography for the mass market.
Despite my oversight, I’ll never forget aiming that bread box size carton of doom at subjects who refused to sit still.
Oh, it makes sense why everyone was so jittery back then; it was the seventies. Jeans rode high and tight in the crotch. Two out of ten people snorted coke with their Cheerios. Still, because the camera lacked any aperture or film speed controls, much less a focus dial that responded to user input, the photographer rarely had the slightest idea about what the picture might look like. Not before whipping the sheets around like Shake and Bake, anyway.
Incidentally, Polaroid is still in business. They merely stopped making film for gems like these:
And I was toying with the idea of buying a polaroid.
One big defect is the film breaks down so dramatically over time. I have a few shot from a company party in 1997 and, well, the scene is a bit murky, Not quite sure what Santa Claus is doing in the picture any more, standing among us.
I always suspected that Polaroids remained popular for so long because one could capture, ahem, adult situations, without the perverted one hour photo guy making extra prints for his personal collection.
I could be wrong on this, of course.
True, more recent film doesn’t last, but I have a polaroid from almost 30 years ago that’s still in good shape.
There’s the ‘adult’ market, but Polaroids have a cult following now.
We get a lot of guys with polaroid cameras in the restaurants in Amsterdam, offering to take your photo for a couple of euros. I guess they’ll be out of work soon.
I had no idea about that service. I wonder if another company will buy the manufacturing rights?