50/365 Polaroid Is A Digital Camera

50/365 Polaroid Is A Digital Camera


Image by Nirazilla
One of the high/low-lights of my trip to Vegas. CES itself being the highlight, this camera, being a big, sad revelation. It’s essentially a digital camera fused with a special printing back that you can print the pictures you shoot from. The camera specs are basically those of a cheap run-of-the-mill point-and-shoot. You can choose to print your mini-photos with or without decorative borders.

Why am I so against the new Polaroid digital camera?

For one, I’ve been exposed to the world of film photography. It’s costly and time-consuming, but incredibly fun and satisfying. The validation that comes with shooting film is far greater than digital.
For another, this does not exemplify Polaroid for me. They can call it a Polaroid, but to me, it will just be a camera with a mini-printer. Polaroids are all about spontaneity and the one-of-a-kind beauty that comes from artful vignetting, muted tones and other completely uncontrollable shifts. These traits don’t mean much when you can print the picture over and over again.
Also, though the Polaroid rep (and most of my family) seemed to enjoy the flowery, digitally placed border, I was not impressed. Not only is it blatantly digital, with synthetic colours completely unbecoming of low-fi film, but they’re pixelated and just plain ugly. Honestly, it makes the image look like one of the four you get while sitting in a photo booth. A Japanese photo booth. On Zinc photo paper, which is basically like any other film printing paper except it’s got a sticker back. And of course, we all know that Polaroids were always meant to be cheap little stickers right?

This situation brings to memory the conflicts between traditional and digital animation. One is costly, time-consuming and arguably more labour-intensive. The other, cleaner, more streamlined and controlled, with similar results. Which do most consumers in today’s market gravitate towards? Digital. Don’t believe me? Although traditional animation will never truly die, as it serves as the basis for most things digital, the situation many of the top Disney animators of yesteryear is pretty depressing.

Can there be no happy medium?

I know that this doesn’t sound bad to some or even most people. In fact, I fully expect this new camera to be a success for Polaroid and I hope it brings the company the millions, straight from the pockets of the curious hobbyists, reviewers and digital fans they’re clearly targeting. I can’t blame them for trying to modernize themselves and keep up in the world of photography and neither should you. Instant film photography is a niche market in a niche market and shows no signs of heating up.

But none of that stops this from sounding like the last nail being hammered into the coffin of classic instant photography.

Read up on the new camera here.

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Tags: 50/365, Camera, Digital, Polaroid