Long One: Was Polaroid Under Appreciated?

[Jim Chinn]

I agree with Eric. The ever escalating cost was the killer. For every few percent you raise the price of something you begin to drive customers away. eventually all they had left were a few die hards on the art end and some pros who wanted the simplicity of polaroid in the field.

About a year ago I bought a couple of thrift store polaroid cameras with the idea of shooting and then scanning for digital output. But it soon became apparent that it would be a much more efficient use of funds to shoot color negative/slide film in MF and put the saved money towards a better scanner.

One of the reasons I think film will be available for quite awhile is enough people enjoy the processes of the darkroom to keep buying it in enough volume to keep costs fairly reasonable. Polaroid had no advantage of process other than ease of use. Digital has pretty much supplanted that advantage.

A final thought is I don't kow if most people ever considered shooting a polaroid camera as serious potography. I know in my family my dad bought an SX70 when they came out. it was great fun for the quick snaps at a birthday party or picture of kids before they went out of the house on their prom date. but when serious family history or a vacation needed recording, out came the slr and the kodachrome.

 

[DKT]

i dunno--i have a lot of snapshots from growing up that were shot with a pack film camera (one of those gray folding ones). I can vividly remember cold clips and the smell of coater....some of the best family pictures we have are from b/w polaroids shot on pack film. the only real problem , is that they're one-of-a-kind and hard to reproduce. I have shot 4x5 copynegs and made larger prints in my adulthood of those snapshots, and they do okay. Not great, but the memories are there, so it doesn't really matter.

as for cost? well, last year the price spiked to about 4 dollars a sheet (55), meaning a case is about 800 dollars. I know this because we placed an order for about 4 cases and wound up getting 2 instead, because the price had changed so much from the last time we ordered. I've been shooting out of that last order of film, and have hit at least two boxes that were duds. every single sheet of film had a manufacturing defect in it, where when you peeled it apart, a strip of paper was running lengthwise between the film & paper--so the neg and the print were unusable, by this section about an inch wide that was unexposed & undeveloped. You could still proof with it though--which I did, but I would have been sorely po'd if I had wanted to use that neg for anything else than a proof. I've had problems with polaroid in the past though, with their packaging, so this isn't really a surprise. In the past, I have gotten replacement from them, but I'm not sure that would be much help to anyone down the road who stockpiles the film.

my opinions only

 

[DKT]

There were good ideas and great presentations of those ideas. Even for a brief while there was a touring Polaroid Creative Techniques that would go city to city showing people various interesting things to do. [/URL]

btw--their magazine for a while was called "Test". they put out some nice free booklets on how to do manipulations as well. these were four color books about the size of the b/w darkroom guides Ilford used to package in with their student paper kits. Polaroid used to give workshops in image transfers and emulsion lifts also. They came twice to the art museum near where I work and gave free classes to about 20-30 people who had to sign up. They brought cases of film, daylab printers, even 8x10 processors and film. They asked you to bring a slide or something that you wanted to experiment with. I went to one of these and spent about 2-3 hours messing around with all that free film. so, I think they tried in some part, it was just as others have said the cost. otoh--as a freelancer, I did an annual report back in the early 90s, and the AD wanted to do some of the work as transfers--and that was a blast, in that the client paid for it, and we shot about two cases of 59 on that. This is the kind of work, no doubt, that would be simulated in photoshop now, for better or worse--and like the cost, this is what did Polaroid in as well. again--my opinions only/not my employers.

 

[amuderick]

Polaroid was always generous whenever I called in a box of unexpired film with a defect. A coupon for replacement of the entire box was issued promptly.

 

[DKT]

oh sure--they've replaced boxes of film in the past, but my point is that if the product isn't being made anymore, and supplies are limited, then you're basically s.o.l. the other thing is that when you're out in the field, on location or stuck someplace with your last box of film, and it's a dud, it doesn't do you much good really. out of all the film I've ever consumed, the highest defect amount has been with polaroid. I once got a roll of Tri-X (US--non gray) from Kodak, that right out of the box, the end caps had never been formed, so the cassette was open on both sides & the film was fogged. that's the only defective bit of product I ever got from kodak. same is pretty much true with fuji and with ilford as well, although I have had some bad paper that was replaced and a bad processing machine that was replaced as well, but not on the frequency of those sheet & pack films. But like I said above--I view it as a necessity, and always have. This doesn't mean it didn't have some problems.

my opinions only/not my employers.

 

[HerrBremerhaven]

Agreeing with DKT on this one, in that I have only found defects in Polaroid materials. In fact, all the Fuji Instant I have used so far has been completely defect free, even a few boxes used a bit past the expiration date. Again, Polaroid did good things, and had good ideas, but they did too little of them, and the word just never really got out.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography