When you think of Polaroid cameras, your first thought may be André 3000 singing “Shake, shake, shake it like a Polaroid picture” in Outkast’s 2003 smash hit Hey Ya. What? Just me?
Anyway, that was back at the turn of the millennium nearly 20 years ago. But, what if I were to tell you that the origin of the Polaroid picture goes back way farther than that? Nope, not with the grunge days of the 90s. Brought in on the new wave of the 80s? Not even close. It wasn’t groovy enough to be invented in the 70s. You may have had a gas with using it in the 60s, but it still predates the Beatles. Even Elvis Presley and his devilish hips weren’t the cause of invention. You’ve got to go all the way back to 1948 to learn about the origin story of the Polaroid camera.
Behold the Model 95: Rise of instant photography
The first public demonstration of instant photography was on February 21, 1947 during a meeting of the Optical Society of America in the one and only New York City. The innovation left such an impression with attendees that the newspapers called it a revolution. The man behind the “revolutionary” invention was American inventor and physicist, Edwin Herbert Land.
By 1948, Land and co. released the first Polaroid camera, called the Model 95, at a department store in Boston. Within a matter of minutes, the camera had entirely sold out. And while that original Polaroid film was different from the ones most of us grew up with (it shot images in sepia and you had to wait 60 seconds before peeling off the negative backing), customers couldn’t get enough of the nearly instant results. Needless to say, it was a huge hit.
In 1950, a true black and white version of the Polaroid was created through a collaboration of Land and Meroë Morse, an art history major from Smith College. However, this new black-and-white film version came with an extra step in the development process – manually swabbing the developed image with a polymer to prevent the photo from darkening too much. Even though it required a little extra effort, again customers couldn’t get enough of it.
By 1957, the Polaroid process was so adored that the New York Times called instant photography “equal in tonal range and brilliance to some of the finest prints made by the usual darkroom routine.” While that’s a far cry from today’s truth, for the time, it definitely was revolutionary, especially as instant color photography exploded in the 1960’s. By 1972, Land and Polaroid had released the SX-70, which represented more of the “true” instant take on the Polaroid pictures that most of us grew up using. It was the culmination of Land’s original 1943 dream of absolute instant photography. A dream he got to witness and enjoy for nearly two decades before his death in 1991.
Rise of the Polaroid (again)
By the 1990s, Polaroid cameras really started to see a decline in sales. Customers were opting for the sharper shooting disposable cameras, and shutter-enthusiasts who had the money to shell out were tapping into the convenient world of digital photography by the end of the decade.
Now, our smartphones have a more powerful camera(s) and instant process than the Polaroid could have ever dreamed back in its heyday. Point. Shoot. Share. So, why is the outdated “instant film” of Polaroid cameras making a comeback?
Simple: nostalgia.
The age old saying of “Everything old is new again” applies to the Polaroid camera and shutter bugs just like vinyl records appeal to audiophiles and music lovers. There’s something about the tangibility of things (that physical touch) that draws people in, whether they’re adults now who grew up using the analog method or kids today wanting to experience how something was done back in the day for the first time. Regardless of what the true answer is, I think we can all agree that it’s still incredibly fun to “Shake, shake, shake it like a Polaroid picture.”
Got any old Polaroid pictures laying around? Send them into Legacybox today and let our team of professional digitizers preserve your memories for years to come!
Before the rise of smartphones with digital cameras and photo-sharing sites like Instagram, Edwin Land’s Polaroid camera was the closest thing the world had to instant photography.
Edwin Land (May 7, 1909–March 1, 1991) was an American inventor, physicist, and avid photograph collector who co-founded the Polaroid Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1937. He is known for inventing a one-step process for developing and printing photographs that revolutionized photography. The Harvard-educated scientist got his groundbreaking idea in 1943 when his young daughter asked why the family camera couldn’t produce a picture immediately. Land returned to his lab inspired by her question and came up with his answer: the Polaroid Instant camera that allowed a photographer to remove a developing print with an image that was ready in about 60 seconds.
The first Polaroid camera, the Land Camera, was sold to the public in November 1948. It was an immediate (or should we say instant) hit, providing both novelty and instant gratification. While the resolution of the photos didn’t quite match that of traditional photographs, professional photographers adopted it as a tool for taking test photos as they set up their shots.
In the 1960s, Edwin Land’s instant cameras got a more streamlined look when he collaborated with industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss on The Automatic 100 Land Camera and also on the Polaroid Swinger, a black and white model that was designed and priced at under $20 to appeal to average consumers.
An intense, passionate researcher who amassed more than 500 patents while at Polaroid, Land’s work was not limited to the camera. Over the years, he became an expert on light polarization technology, which had applications for sunglasses. He worked on night-vision goggles for the military during World War II and developed a stereoscopic viewing system called the Vectograph that could help detect enemies whether or not they were wearing camouflage. He also participated in the development of the U-2 spy plane. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and the W.O. Baker Award of the Security Affairs Support Association in 1988.
On October 11, 1985, the Polaroid Corporation won a five-year patent infringement battle against Kodak Corporation, one of the country’s largest patent lawsuits involving photography. The U.S. District Court of Massachusetts found that Polaroid’s patents were valid and infringed. As a result, Kodak was forced to pull out of the instant camera market. In a good faith effort, the company began offering compensation to their customers who owned their cameras but wouldn’t be able to purchase a suitable film for them.
With the rise of digital photography at the start of the 21st century, the fate of the Polaroid camera seemed grim. In 2008, the company announced it would stop making its patented film. However, the Polaroid instant camera remains viable thanks to Florian Kaps, André Bosman, and Marwan Saba, the founders of The Impossible Project, which raised funds to help create monochromatic and color film for use with Polaroid instant cameras.
On March 1, 1991, at the age of 81, Edwin Land died from an undisclosed illness. He had been ill for a couple of years, spending his last few weeks at an undisclosed hospital in his hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Information about the actual cause of his death was never readily available per his family’s wishes, but his gravesite and tombstone can be found in Cambridge at the Mount Auburn Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark and the resting place of many historically significant citizens of the Boston area.
The Polaroid Corporation was founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land. The original name was Land-Wheelwright Laboratories. It was renamed after their first product Polaroid. Polaroid meaning Polarize and the suffix -oid as in to make. It is most famous for its instant film cameras, which reached the market in 1948, and continued to be the company's flagship product line. The company's original dominant market was in polarized sunglasses, an outgrowth of Land's self-guided research in polarization after leaving Harvard University at 17 (he later returned to Harvard to continue his research). In 1944, while on vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico Edwin Lands' daughter asked why she has to wait to see a photo he took of her. Research started in developing an instant photography system the same year. In Christmas 1946, the company assembled in a movie theater showing the Jack Benny movie The Horn Blows at Midnight. In the movie, an instant passport-type camera is shown, and Land announced to the confusion of his employees This is SX70 without further explanation. In February 1947, Land demonstrated a one-step, one minute photographic process at the Optical Society of America.
The first camera sold was the Model 95 in November 26. 1948 in a Jordan Marsh department store in Boston, Massachusetts. Polaroid started working with Timex; mostly known for manufacturing timepieces. Roll film as well as pack film cameras were manufactured at their Little Rock, Arkansas plant. In 1958, 4x5 instant sheet film was released. The system allows using instant film with 4x5 cameras by loading instant film sheets into a Polaroid holder. In the 1960's Polaroid made many cameras and systems designed for industrial and professional use. Most well known are passport, macro and copy cameras. Their first camera with an 'electric eye' was released called the Polaroid Model 900. Nippon Polaroid Kabushiki Kaisha (Polaroid Japan) and Polaroid Italy is establish. In 1963, instant pack film was introduced with the Polaroid Land Model 100 camera. By this time over five million Polaroid instant cameras have been manufactured. Entry level consumer cameras were introduced most famous was the Polaroid Swinger for under $20.
In 1972, the SX70 system was introduced. This is a new OneStep instant photo system that has self contained developing, timing with motor driven automatic film ejection. This reduces 'PolaTrash' as the previous systems requires discarding a lot of wasted materials.
After Polaroid defeated Kodak in a patent battle, Kodak left the instant camera business on January 9, 1986.
Early instant cameras were often named "Land Cameras," named after the inventor of the instant process, Dr. Land. Instant cameras have been produced to use three main categories of film: rollfilm, packfilm, and integral film. All of these films can be expensive, usually costing about $1 per shot, or print. Through its history, Polaroid has been known as a company that builds quirky cameras cheaply that work quite well. Most Polaroid cameras have fully automatic exposure systems, with an electric eye to determine correct exposure. Quality can range from extremely good, as in the Pathfinder or SX-70 cameras, to extremely poor, as in the JoyCam. Despite its history of innovation, the company entered the digital photography market very late, and as a result has neither a significant market share nor significant innovation in this area.
Professional applications of the Polaroid instant film and cameras were as screen-shot cameras for scientific instruments, passport / identity photos, or large format cameras of other manufacturers equipped with Polaroid sheet film holders or pack film backs. Polaroid shots were often used to test studio lighting setups before use of other types of film or camera, before the instant playback of digital cameras became available.
The company filed for federal bankruptcy protection in October 11, 2001, and most of the business was thereafter carried on by the Polaroid Holding Company (PHC), managed by Bank One. Much criticism surrounded this takeover because the process left executives of the company with large bonuses, while stockholders, as well as current and retired employees, were left with nothing. Polaroid's bankruptcy was widely believed to be the result of the failure of its senior management to see the effect of digital cameras on its film business, a fate that also befell its primary rival, Kodak. Since the bankruptcy Polaroid-branded LCD and Plasma televisions and portable DVD players have appeared on the market.
On April 27, 2005, Petters Group Worldwide announced its acquisition of PHC. Petters has in the past bought up failed companies with well-known names for the value of those names. The same year, Flextronics purchased Polaroid's manufacturing operations and the decision was made to send most of the manufacturing to China. In September 2008, the Petters Group was infiltrated by the FBI on evidence of a $3.7 billion investment fraud. In October 2008, Petters Group Worldwide filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Thomas J. Petters was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the fraud.
In March 2009, following bankruptcy proceedings, the Polaroid brand name was sold once more to Hilco Consumer Capital and Gordon Brothers Brands. It is now known as PLR IP Holdings, LLC. At the time of writing, no film is being manufactured under the famous name, but various projects are being undertaken by people wishing to revive the Polaroid format.
In January 2009 Polaroid introduced the digital instant camera PoGo TWO, a variant of Polaroid's portable PoGo photo printer with built-in digicam. The very compact PoGo printers use special "Zink" paper for ink-free printing.
In May, 2017 PLR IP Holdings, LLC was sold to Wiaczeslaw Smolokowski who also is majority shareholder of Impossible. It was announced in Sept 2017 that Impossible will now use the Polaroid Originals branding on their products.
Types of Polaroid instant cameras
Instant rollfilm
Type 40 rollfilm
Type 30 rollfilm
Type 20 rollfim
Instant packfilm
Polaroid produced various model lines of cameras to use the peel-apart 80 or 100 series packfilm. These types of film are no longer manufactured by Polaroid, but Fuji makes FP-100 instant film for the latter size.
Folding Cameras - Series 1 (Mid 60's - Mid 70's)
'Bellows'-type models which fold down into a solid body, with a flip-up cover to fold over the lens assembly. All these models have rangefinder style focus mechanisms, and some of the more expensive models include Zeiss Ikon-produced rangefinders. The shutter must be manually cocked after every release of the shutter before another photograph can be taken. All cameras in this series use 100 series film.
Camera examples:
Folding cameras - Series 2 (Late 70's - Early 00's)
Rigid, self erecting bellows-type cameras where the base of the bellows structure becomes the cover for the camera when folded. These models do not feature rangefinders at all, instead they all rely on distance scale focusing by turning the front lens element. These cameras can all take either 100 or 80 series film; the fixed viewfinders feature guides for each format.
Camera examples:
- Polaroid ProPack
- Polaroid EE100
- Polaroid EE100 Special
Non-folding consumer models (Late 60's - Mid 70's)
Fixed plastic body cameras, most have front lens element distance scale focusing, though some are fixed focus. Most models use 100 series packfilm, a few use 80 series, and some are able to use both. Many models exist in this series; often they are very similar and were simply renamed for different markets. Model names include Colorpack, Minute Maker, Square Shooter, Swinger.
- Polaroid rigid pack film consumer models
Non-folding professional models (60's - 90's) Professional, metal-bodied cameras with very high build quality and excellent optics, and passport cameras. Most of these are pack film based cameras, but some are interchangeable and can use integral backs.
Camera examples:
- Polaroid 600/600 SE
- Polaroid Miniportrait
- Polaroid CU-4
- Polaroid CU-5
- Polaroid DS-34 Direct Screen GelCam
- Polaroid ED-10 Microscope camera(1969)
- Polaroid CU-5 (1964)
- Polaroid CR-10 (1983)
- Polaroid ID-2 (1966)
- Polaroid ID-3 Identification System model 710 (1971)
- Polaroid ID-4 Instant Identification System
- Polaroid M-10 aerial camera (1968)
- Polaroid MP-3 (1962)
- Polaroid MP-4 (1973)
- Special Events (1968)
- Special Events 2 (1975)
- Polaroid SE-5 Special Events 5
Miscellaneous
- Polaroid Polaprinter Slide Copier model 3410
Instant film holders
There are several exchangeable backs for 35mm, medium and large format film cameras that use peel-apart packfilm as well. Not many of these were made by Polaroid themselves. Polaroid manufactured the backs, other manufacturers bought the backs to modify and integrate into their products. They are often used to take 'preview' shots on photo shoots, though they can be used as high-quality manually set Polaroid cameras with interchangeable optics.
- Polaroid CB40 - Type 40 roll film back - 1951
- Polaroid CB100 - Type 100 packfilm holder (all metal) - 1963
- Polaroid CB101 - Type 100 packfilm holder (metal bar)
- Polaroid CB103 - Type 100 packfilm holder (plastic bar)
- Polaroid CB70 - SX70 integral holder
- Polaroid CB72 - SX70 integral holder
- Polaroid CB80 - Type 80 packfilm holder - 1971
- Polaroid CB80 Camera Back for Holga
- Polaroid CB405 - Type 100 CB103 back for 4 x 5 cameras - 1974
- Polaroid 500 - Type 50 4 x 5 instant sheet film holder - 1958
- Polaroid 545 - Type 50 4 x 5 instant sheet film holder - 1968
- Polaroid 545i - Type 50 4 x 5 instant sheet film holder
- Polaroid 550 - Type 550 4 x 5 pack film holder
Instant integral film
There were three main types of integral film produced by Polaroid: SX-70, 600 and Spectra film. All follow the same basic design: the film packs contain batteries which power the camera's exposure meter and automatically eject the pictures on shutter release.
SX-70 (aka Time Zero) and 600 film are identical in size - both produce square prints of 79mm x 79mm with the familiar 'Polaroid border' around the image. Many users of cameras designed for SX-70 film today use 600 film instead. Certain measures must be taken to prevent overexposure if 600 film is used in SX-70 cameras as 600 film has a speed equal to ISO 600; SX-70 develops at ISO 150.
The format of Spectra film is slightly larger and less oblong: the image produced is 92mm x 73mm. Like 600 film, Spectra has a speed of ISO 600. Spectra is known as Image film in some markets.
Examples:
SX-70 Film
600 Film
Many Polaroid cameras were designed to take 600 Integral film. Mostly they were low-specification plastic models designed for one-touch snapshots at parties (e.g. Impulse, 636, P 600) but there were a few SLR models aimed at professional photographers.
Spectra Film
- Polaroid Spectra (aka Image) Series.
Sheet film
Polaroid offered a giant variety of sheet film for its daylight loading sheet film holders Polaroid 545 and Polaroid 545i. The Polaroid company no longer produces film in the 4x5 inch large format enveloped sheet film, but Fujifilm produces it as part of its FP range.
Other types of instant film
Polaroid has produced several different types of smaller format film over the years, as well as experimenting with various types of disposable, toy and miniature camera formats.
The films include:
- Captiva (also known as 500) film - 73 x 54mm image size, ISO 600, 10 pictures to a filmpack
- Pocket film - 36 x 24mm image, ISO 640, 12 images to a pack. Available in a sticky-backed version.
- Mio film - 62 x 45mm (Uses technology licensed from Fuji. Although Polaroid issued its own Mio film, the cameras also use Instax Mini film.)
Camera examples:
Rebranded Fujifilm cameras
Digital
- Polaroid A200
- Polaroid A310
- Polaroid A500
- Polaroid A544
- Polaroid A800
- Polaroid A932
- Polaroid PDC-1050
- Polaroid PDC-1100
- Polaroid PDC-1300
- Polaroid PDC-2000 (4.1996)
- Polaroid PDC-2000/40
- Polaroid PDC 2000/60
- Polaroid PDC-2150
- Polaroid PDC-2300Z
- Polaroid PDC-300
- Polaroid PDC-3000
- Polaroid PDC-310
- Polaroid PDC-3350
- Polaroid PDC-640 / PDC-640 Plus
- Polaroid PDC-700
- Polaroid PDC-800
Digital color zinc paper
35mm
fixed focus
zoom
- Polaroid PZ1710 (2004)[1] - 35 to 57mm zoom
- Polaroid PZ1800 - 28 to 50mm zoom
- Polaroid PZ2001 - 35 to 70mm zoom
- Polaroid PZ2300 - 38 to 90mm zoom
- Polaroid PZ3000 - 38 to 115mm zoom
- Polaroid 6300Z - 35 to 70mm zoom
- Polaroid 8500Z - 38 to 115mm zoom
- Polaroid 900Z Super Macro
single-use
- Sidekick
- Talking Sidekick
APS
- Polaroid 5500FF
- Polaroid 7100FF
- Polaroid 7200FF
- Polaroid 7300AF
- Polaroid 7500z - 25 to 50mm zoom