Polaroid fades to black
I can't tell you how sad I was to read just now that Polaroid has stopped producing the instant film that made it famous.
It actually stopped making instant cameras a year ago, on the grounds that since today's generation of digital cams are instant by nature, there was no point.
But the latest news means that those of us with cherished Polaroid cameras in our attics will no longer be able to use them.
In all honesty, I probably wasn't going to use mine again anyway. I haven't used it since about 1987. But I liked the idea that it was there if I needed it.
My love affair with Polaroid goes back to the early Sixties when as a boy I watched spellbound as my Uncle Ralph, visiting from New York, pointed an early Land Camera (they were named after the firm's founder, Edwin Land) at the animals at Chester Zoo. It was sophistication the likes of which I'd scarcely imagined. The camera had an extending bellows lens and a slot on the side from which you pulled a paper tab every time you took a picture. You then had to count to 30 and peel off the backing sheet to reveal a black-and-white image whose size we would today consider a thumbnail. Then you had to wipe it with a tube of fixer to stop it fading away. The whole process seemed like magic.
A few years later, as a cub reporter, I had to take a Polaroid Swinger with me on man-on-the-street interviews. The technology had advanced by then from roll film to cartridges which, if memory serves, could take only eight shots each and cost so much that I was limited by the editor to one cartridge per set of interviews.
These would go something like this:
ME: Excuse me - I'm from the Gazette. Can I ask you, what do you think about the price of fish?
INTERVIEWEE: It's rather expensive, isn't it?
ME: Great. Do you mind if I take a quick snap? (PULLS POLAROID SWINGER FROM CASE, TURNS ORANGE KNOB ON TOP UNTIL 'YES' APPEARS IN VIEWFINDER. PRESSES BUTTON. PULLS TAB FROM CAMERA AND COUNTS TO 30. PEELS OFF BACKING)
Ah, it's a bit over-exposed. Do you mind if I do that again?
And so it would go on until the cartridge was empty.
Fast forward a few more years and I got a super-duper Polaroid as a leaving present from work, which not only shot in colour but had a motor that ejected the print automatically. No more counting to 30, not even any backing paper to peel.
But it was all a long time ago - an amateur photographic era of flash cubes, Kodachrome slides and 8mm cine film. It lives on only in the glass cabinets of the National Media Museum.
Polaroids were tactile in a way that digital photography - much as I love it - isn't. Those instant snaps were the calling cards of a more innocent age, when technology was unexpected and wondrous. We have lost so much of that.
On the other hand, I am writing this in a chalet at Center Parcs, posting to the internet over a mobile connection from a laptop. Which is not something I could have done in those innocent, distant Sixties. And which is, though no longer unexpected, every bit as wondrous.
It actually stopped making instant cameras a year ago, on the grounds that since today's generation of digital cams are instant by nature, there was no point.
But the latest news means that those of us with cherished Polaroid cameras in our attics will no longer be able to use them.
In all honesty, I probably wasn't going to use mine again anyway. I haven't used it since about 1987. But I liked the idea that it was there if I needed it.
My love affair with Polaroid goes back to the early Sixties when as a boy I watched spellbound as my Uncle Ralph, visiting from New York, pointed an early Land Camera (they were named after the firm's founder, Edwin Land) at the animals at Chester Zoo. It was sophistication the likes of which I'd scarcely imagined. The camera had an extending bellows lens and a slot on the side from which you pulled a paper tab every time you took a picture. You then had to count to 30 and peel off the backing sheet to reveal a black-and-white image whose size we would today consider a thumbnail. Then you had to wipe it with a tube of fixer to stop it fading away. The whole process seemed like magic.
A few years later, as a cub reporter, I had to take a Polaroid Swinger with me on man-on-the-street interviews. The technology had advanced by then from roll film to cartridges which, if memory serves, could take only eight shots each and cost so much that I was limited by the editor to one cartridge per set of interviews.
These would go something like this:
ME: Excuse me - I'm from the Gazette. Can I ask you, what do you think about the price of fish?
INTERVIEWEE: It's rather expensive, isn't it?
ME: Great. Do you mind if I take a quick snap? (PULLS POLAROID SWINGER FROM CASE, TURNS ORANGE KNOB ON TOP UNTIL 'YES' APPEARS IN VIEWFINDER. PRESSES BUTTON. PULLS TAB FROM CAMERA AND COUNTS TO 30. PEELS OFF BACKING)
Ah, it's a bit over-exposed. Do you mind if I do that again?
And so it would go on until the cartridge was empty.
Fast forward a few more years and I got a super-duper Polaroid as a leaving present from work, which not only shot in colour but had a motor that ejected the print automatically. No more counting to 30, not even any backing paper to peel.
But it was all a long time ago - an amateur photographic era of flash cubes, Kodachrome slides and 8mm cine film. It lives on only in the glass cabinets of the National Media Museum.
Polaroids were tactile in a way that digital photography - much as I love it - isn't. Those instant snaps were the calling cards of a more innocent age, when technology was unexpected and wondrous. We have lost so much of that.
On the other hand, I am writing this in a chalet at Center Parcs, posting to the internet over a mobile connection from a laptop. Which is not something I could have done in those innocent, distant Sixties. And which is, though no longer unexpected, every bit as wondrous.
Labels: land camera, polaroid
posted by David Behrens at 22:35
0 comments
