Impossible version of instagram

darkosaric · Sep 10, 2012

Dead Link Removed

I think it would be better to make those back for hasselblad, but I guess Iphone market is bigger :\

SkipA · Sep 10, 2012

Interesting idea, but a universal cradle that could accept any phone would make it more appealing. A built-in LCD screen that could be sent an image (wired or wirelessly) from any digital source (phone, digicam, scanner, computer) and expose onto IP film would be even better.

Now, if they'll only work on improving their film...

himself · Sep 10, 2012

christ this thing makes me vomit, not sure what's worse about the whole dreadful idea.

could be the fact that this thing has no market - aren't the people likely to use it already faking polaroids and then just print them off on a photoprinter, it's not like the thing is conveniant or that mobile...

maybe it's the fact that the head of the company that makes the film it uses, the film he wants us to buy, all but admits he doesn't use his own materials, but his iphone to take picture instead...

but it's probably the fact that their first "polaroid camera" is just a printer, for digital images. weren't they meant to save instant film? doesn't polaroid already make an instant digital camera...

I'm just bitter, bitter that people have been looking for a back like this they could fit to their 600se, medium/LF cameras since the few originals were snapped up and sell for stupid money and they go and make one for iphones.

Christ this brings me down, still hopefully they'll make it, some arseholes will buy it, the fad will pass and I can buy one on ebay for a steal, cut it to bits and use it as it should be used - as an analogue camera.

Prof_Pixel · Sep 10, 2012

himself said:
I'm just bitter, bitter that people have been looking for a back like this they could fit to their 600se, medium/LF cameras since the few originals were snapped up and sell for stupid money and they go and make one for iphones.

There were almost 100 million iPhones sold during the first three quarters of this year. How many medium format cameras were sold during that period?

If you were designing a product, which of the two markets would you aim at?

SkipA · Sep 10, 2012

himself said:
could be the fact that this thing has no market - aren't the people likely to use it already faking polaroids and then just print them off on a photoprinter, it's not like the thing is conveniant or that mobile...

There are a lot of iPhone users. Probably a sizeable number of people who already use IP film also have an iPhone.

himself said:
but it's probably the fact that their first "polaroid camera" is just a printer, for digital images. weren't they meant to save instant film? doesn't polaroid already make an instant digital camera...

It makes sense to me. The guts of the thing is the FPU (film processing unit). A camera can be built around it, and they will probably do that too, but the market for a new instant film camera is likely much smaller than the market for the iPhone printer. They'll need money to come up with other applications, so why not target a large market for your first rollout?

bitnaut · Sep 10, 2012

I was one of the first to jump in and donate this morning. It'll be fun to play with…technically you could also make it a pinhole instant film camera with the appropriate hole instead of the iPhone holder.

one90guy · Sep 10, 2012

Impossible film is to expensive for me and I will just keep using my old Polaroids. Do have a cell phone but it is dumb phone with more features than I use:^)

darkosaric · Sep 11, 2012

bitnaut said:
technically you could also make it a pinhole instant film camera with the appropriate hole instead of the iPhone holder.

Actually this is very good remark! You should send them an email with idea to make pinhole holder .

Sean · Sep 11, 2012

There is definitely a market for it if they've nearly hit their funding goal in a matter of days. Looks like this one will be over funded quite a bit in the end. Will stick to my sx70 though if they can bring that back cheaper..

Richard S. (rich815) · Sep 11, 2012

I've bought into two kickstarter campaigns. Both are now months late and still are likely weeks if not months away from shipping. I will not do another anytime soon.

himself · Sep 13, 2012

just because people have and will buy iphones doesn't mean there's a market for this - seems a bit speculative to be honest.
why would the people that can take fake polaroid images and then print them off as many times as they want for almost zero cost pay 200 then another 2.5 per image?

himself · Sep 13, 2012

SkipA said:
There are a lot of iPhone users. Probably a sizeable number of people who already use IP film also have an iPhone.

It makes sense to me. The guts of the thing is the FPU (film processing unit). A camera can be built around it, and they will probably do that too, but the market for a new instant film camera is likely much smaller than the market for the iPhone printer. They'll need money to come up with other applications, so why not target a large market for your first rollout?

but those that have both will just use their cameras surely and not wast the expensive film on printing a digital file they could print otherwise?

the FPU unit - you mean a set of rollers? the ejection mechanism needs to be linked to mirror/shutter, so will need to be redesigned anyway... at further cost.

seems like a bit of bandwagoning in the hope of making a fast buck to me, I just hope it doesn't backfire is all

SkipA · Sep 13, 2012

It's a bit more than a set of rollers, although perhaps not a whole lot more. It's the functional portion of the iPhone image copier, and it will be the core film handling element in any new product that IP chooses to design around it, such as a new instant camera.

The FPU is described here: Dead Link Removed

I don't have an iPhone and I likely never will. I like instant cameras, and that is why I'm interested in this product, and hope it sells very well. I want this product to make lots of money for IP so they can invest in more R&D and come out with new instant film cameras, hopefully ones with hiqh quality optics, and with selectable automatic exposure or full manual modes. Autofocus and auto-exposure would be desirable for most people. A high end interchangeable lens manual focus camera with either a Leica M-mount or Nikon mount would be great too.

If the iPhone printer sells well, then IP will sell more film, and the costs per image could come down to the point that more people will be able to afford it, which may spur further development and more users, and so on.

EdSawyer · Sep 13, 2012

It will be interesting to see how it sells. It does look like it could be adapted to a new instant camera.

hardware (cameras, etc.) isnt' really what's holding them (IP) back from more success. Mostly it's quality of the product, and price/value. If they could improve the quality of the film more, it would become more viable and useful. As it stands now, expired time-zero film is a better option for several reasons, IMNSHO.

-Ed

SkipA · Sep 13, 2012

I agree that film quality is their biggest problem, Ed. I bought several packs of their b&w and color instant films for my SX-70, and I was pretty disappointed in the results. Lack of saturation and sharpness are the biggest issues. The film is overly sensitive to light when ejected, and there are random emulsion and developing artifacts that suggest quality control problems.

himself · Sep 13, 2012

SkipA said:
It's a bit more than a set of rollers, although perhaps not a whole lot more. It's the functional portion of the iPhone image copier, and it will be the core film handling element in any new product that IP chooses to design around it, such as a new instant camera.

from what I can see and have read from the link it's nothing more than the ejection mechanism, the rest seems to be done by the phone itself... but correct me if I'm wrong.

so with that in mind, the amount of work to turn it into a functioning camera (assuming the go for slr rather than say a rangefinder or tlr... pinhole?) makes it more of a hindrance than a help. Why would you limit yourself to having to retro fit the rest of the camera around what amounts to a small arm that pushes the film forward? Surely this is the last thing you need.

SkipA said:
If the iPhone printer sells well, then IP will sell more film, and the costs per image could come down to the point that more people will be able to afford it, which may spur further development and more users, and so on.

seems like a lot speculation to me, can't they just send someone out west to pan for gold?

Diapositivo · Sep 13, 2012

darkosaric said:
Actually this is very good remark! You should send them an email with idea to make pinhole holder .

It seems they had the idea themselves

Dead Link Removed

SkipA · Sep 13, 2012

himself said:
from what I can see and have read from the link it's nothing more than the ejection mechanism, the rest seems to be done by the phone itself... but correct me if I'm wrong.

There aren't a lot of details available yet, but yes, I believe you misunderstand the device. It is a camera, albeit a simple one. It has a film back, a manual shutter, and a fixed focus lens to collect the light from the phone screen.

This doesn't differ much from my 8x20 banquet camera with a shutterless lens mounted. They both have film loaded into a film holder. They both have a shutterless lens to gather the light. Both have a manual shutter or darkslide to start and stop the exposure. In the case of my banquet camera, I can pull the darkslide and use a hat as a shutter. The Impossible Instant Lab just has a darkslide and doesn't need the hat.

The iPhone app calculates the exposure time, displays the image, and notifies the user when the exposure is complete so he can close the shutter / darkslide on the Instant Lab. It can optionally apply special effects to the image. That is a little fancier than what the sun does by simply emitting light that is then reflected by the objects it strikes, but photographers regularly use light meters to calculate exposure values and use apertures, shutters, watches, timers, or counting to control the exposure. Not a great deal of difference, really.

himself said:
so with that in mind, the amount of work to turn it into a functioning camera (assuming the go for slr rather than say a rangefinder or tlr... pinhole?) makes it more of a hindrance than a help. Why would you limit yourself to having to retro fit the rest of the camera around what amounts to a small arm that pushes the film forward? Surely this is the last thing you need.

It's already a camera.

himself said:
seems like a lot speculation to me, can't they just send someone out west to pan for gold?

Hope, not speculation.

himself · Sep 14, 2012

SkipA said:
There aren't a lot of details available yet, but yes, I believe you misunderstand the device. It is a camera, albeit a simple one. It has a film back, a manual shutter, and a fixed focus lens to collect the light from the phone screen.

This doesn't differ much from my 8x20 banquet camera with a shutterless lens mounted. They both have film loaded into a film holder. They both have a shutterless lens to gather the light. Both have a manual shutter or darkslide to start and stop the exposure. In the case of my banquet camera, I can pull the darkslide and use a hat as a shutter. The Impossible Instant Lab just has a darkslide and doesn't need the hat.

The iPhone app calculates the exposure time, displays the image, and notifies the user when the exposure is complete so he can close the shutter / darkslide on the Instant Lab. It can optionally apply special effects to the image. That is a little fancier than what the sun does by simply emitting light that is then reflected by the objects it strikes, but photographers regularly use light meters to calculate exposure values and use apertures, shutters, watches, timers, or counting to control the exposure. Not a great deal of difference, really.

really?

if you believe it to already be a camera then I don't suppose there's much point continuing this discussion.
it's a copy machine, plain and simple - one that is inefficient and uses poor quality materials, quite expensive too.

there are already better versions of it.

I say speculation because they are relying on the fad for iphone polaroids to continue long enough to make the cash they need, considering how quick these things come and go I'm betting against them.

this is also sidestepping what I think to be the real problem - the fact that he admits to wanting to use his iphone more than his polaroid, the polaroid that uses the film he wants you to buy and test for him, for quite a chunk of cash.

could you imagine Gerald Ford saying that while he likes his own car, he'd rather drive a GM, hell, or even ride a bike.

Felinik · Sep 14, 2012

Wow!

That was fast!!

Early this week, monday, the amount donated was slightly under $190k ... now $391k...

Impressive!

Diapositivo · Sep 14, 2012

From what TIP writes, the original idea was to make a camera and then they decided to do this device as a modular concept which will be used in the future also for a camera.

This device has a lens which, given the price, I hope is decent.

To obtain a simple camera they don't need much more: a light meter, a shutter, a diaphragm and a focusing helicoid.

A pinhole camera is a "camera" and does not even have a lens.

If this is not a camera, it's something very close to it.

I wish this project success as it is another brick in the rebuilding of interest for analogue materials. On the other hand, I hope that the success of TIP does not link analogue photography with lower quality, hipsters, "different at all costs", "retro at all cost" mentality in the general perception of the market.

The success of TIP, Lomography etc. in the long run can even jeopardise the reputation of all analogue photography materials as far as quality is concerned.
Widespread misconceptions can be very harmful.

This is my only concern. Besides that, I hope they can sell many.

himself · Sep 14, 2012

Diapositivo said:
To obtain a simple camera they don't need much more: a light meter, a shutter, a diaphragm and a focusing helicoid.

that's not a lot eh?

they also have to match all that to what they already have, which could end up meaning starting from scratch all over again...
more expense and more R&D making this almost a complete waste of time when it comes to long term gain rather than a fast buck (which incidentally i have no doubt they will do, but is just another question mark over the motives they claimed to originally have).

the rest of your post I agree with

EdSawyer · Sep 14, 2012

seriously, though - why bother with a camera? There's already millions of SX-70 cameras out there that are at least as good as anything TIP is likely to come up with (and that's being generous). Regular SX-70s are already a great camera. Any camera is limited by the quality of their film, not the camera itself.

If they make some nice profit off this, hopefully they will pour that into improving the film product.

Prof_Pixel · Sep 14, 2012

EdSawyer said:
seriously, though - why bother with a camera? There's already millions of SX-70 cameras out there

You are missing the point - there are MANY millions of iPhones out there - as I said earlier, Apple sold almost 100 MILLION iPhones in the first quarter of this year alone. From '72 to '74 Polaroid only sold 700,000 SX-70 cameras; how many are still around?

They need to come up with a LARGE market for their film project. This sounds like a relatively simple experiment.

Toffle · Sep 14, 2012

himself said:
christ this thing makes me vomit, not sure what's worse about the whole dreadful idea.

could be the fact that this thing has no market - aren't the people likely to use it already faking polaroids and then just print them off on a photoprinter, it's not like the thing is conveniant or that mobile...

Christ this brings me down, still hopefully they'll make it, some arseholes will buy it, the fad will pass and I can buy one on ebay for a steal, cut it to bits and use it as it should be used - as an analogue camera.

The point is that people are NOT printing their pictures - very few at any rate. I think this is a very clever and imaginative way of re-imagining the Polaroid concept.

Well, they have their money; let's hope that they are able to sell a sizeable volume of devices and film. I have heard (some) good things about their attempts to improve the quality and permanence of their films. Maybe their dream was not impossible after all.

As for the rest of your bitter post... wow.

Impossible version of instagram

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