Polaroid Quits

I used to have one of those cameras that used 600 film, but it went missing a ways back. Since I bought my first digital P&S, I haven't missed Poloroid. I should get a used camera a few packs of film just for the heck of it though. Watching the film develop was always kind of neat, at least compared to waiting for your film to come back from the lab.
 
KoNickon said:
Am I the only one, or do others think that Polaroid film was really more of a party trick than anything that produced a decent image? I'll admit my experience with Polaroids is limited to the consumer stuff, but I find the images to be not very sharp and the colors, well, only an approximation. Any one-time-use 35mm camera produces better image quality, and you only have to wait an hour or so for prints.

From a fine art standpoint, I can appreciate the attraction of Polaroids, but if I'm looking to record an event, they are not that great an option.
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Nick, search for "polaroid film 55" on google images and probably flickr, and prepare to be blown away :)
 
Type 55 great stuff, and very capable of producing excellent images. All of the pack and sheet polaroid materials can produce high quality images. That is why Ansel Adams did a book on it. Much more than just a party trick. I hope someone picks this stuff up and keeps making something.
 
Todd Frederick said:
...I'm not opposed to advances in photography and I use digital cameras often, but, it's irresponsible, IMO, for a company to ignore a large group of customers who still use their products just to make a greater profit.
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The almighty buck is all that matters anymore. Shareholders don't care if people love the product, only that it is profitable. Growth, growth and more growth.
 
Making Polaroid film as a niche market might be a great business for a small company. I hope some entrepreneur out there picks it up.
But it is a lousy business for a large company with shareholders expecting breakthrough products.
Eric
 
sepiareverb said:
The almighty buck is all that matters anymore. Shareholders don't care if people love the product, only that it is profitable. Growth, growth and more growth.
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Any sane person would shut down these plants. Poloroid was definately a casualty of digital. One doesn't need growth per se to make a profit, but staying in a rapidly shrinking market is beyond stupid.
 
...now that the digital wave made for me affordable a second hand
medium format camera with a polaroid back there will be no more polaroid film because of the digital wave ...
rob
 
sooner said:
This is bad news, but I don't think its implications should be taken too far, and I hope it doesn't bring on another wave of the "film is dead" crowd, tedious (and wrong) as they are. However, it will be interesting to see who, if anyone, steps up and decides to take over that production.
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The storm crows will always be with us looking for carrion. Best to do as farmers do, and shoot them down.:(
 
Yeah, isn't there some rich billionaire with nothing to do except go to parties for other rich people and take polaroids who might be willing to buy the film production and run/own it like a pet project? There are plenty of mid-sized businesses that are family owned and "content" to make a steady profit without growing constantly. Come to think of it, there are a number of industries that need fundamental changes, like the airlines. Maybe soon we'll have large numbers of relatively cheap commercial planes that can be run by small, local companies, from local airports. Some are saying this will do to the airline industry what Ebay did for garage sales. How is this related to Polaroid's demise (work with me, here)? Just that industry shakeout isn't always bad, or fatal to the product.
 
Al Patterson said:
Any sane person would shut down these plants. Poloroid was definately a casualty of digital. One doesn't need growth per se to make a profit, but staying in a rapidly shrinking market is beyond stupid.
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Really?
Any sane person would shut Apple down 10 years ago when they almost tanked. But a visionary (or crazy) guy like Steve Job revived it. It's all about marketing.

Film in the *consumer* market is shrinking. But film int the *artistic* market is not shrinking.

But it does take someone or a group of people who are willing to help the transition from one market to another for film to survive.
 
Part of Polaroid's problem- besides digital making most of their products beside the point- was the money they hemorrhaged fending off a hostile take-over attempt in the late 80's. They just never recovered from that; and yeah, their marketing has been pretty lame for, oh, the last twenty years- but that's gotta be partly because for so long they were the only game in town. Sure, maybe their consumer products seemed like a party trick, but their commercial and large format products were really superb. Until the advent of good digital technology, most commercial pros shot tons and tons of 'roids. I know I shot many thousands of dollars worth of Polaroid materials when I worked in commercial studios, and I wasn't the only one. I still have a hoard of P/N, both 665 and type 55 in the freezer, and I am pretty stingy about what I'll shoot with it- this was just amazing stuff; the negatives had a HUGE tonal range when properly exposed, and even the positives had were beautiful. I will sorely miss it.

A sad day indeed, though the clock has been ticking for Polaroid for some time now. Sigh.
 
shadowfox said:
Really?
Any sane person would shut Apple down 10 years ago when they almost tanked. But a visionary (or crazy) guy like Steve Job revived it. It's all about marketing.

Film in the *consumer* market is shrinking. But film int the *artistic* market is not shrinking.

But it does take someone or a group of people who are willing to help the transition from one market to another for film to survive.
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I disagree. The problem as I see is that before Jobs returned, they were trying to market uninteresting products. Apple turned around when a visionary took it over and made a string of great products, rather than the same boring overpriced MACs.

The iMac and the iPod are what turned Apple around. Now the new marketing does help, but one needs a decent product to market first.

You can bet that had the iMac been a flop, Apple would be history today, just like Commodore, Atari and many others.
 
I'm glad that I sold my Polaroid back for the 'blad a few years ago, but now I have to figure out what I'll do with my Polaroid 110-B which is converted to take pack films. The 127mm Rodenstock lens is great, and I've used it on 4x5 as a moderate wide angle. It covers nicely.
 
I have a box of my late aunt's pictures-she worked in the Polaroid cafeteria many years. The pictures are all Polaroids, of course.

I have mixed memories-my parents used 127 slides 'til the mid sixties, the a mishmash of instamatics and Polaroids before movies took over. Only the slides and movies are worthwhile.
 
Progress sucks, how long before we read this about all the 35mm films. I do wet plate, all I need is glass, but I have dry plate cameras I cant get plates for, Film cameras I have to cut to special sizes and now Polaroid cameras that are extinct. In 25 years I'll be searching all over to find high octane fuel for my 65 Jaguar XKE.
 
More interesting–to me, anyway–is the endquote by that IDC talking head, about how people shooting digital appear to be moving away from print-oriented photos, and merely into shooting e-mailed pics to each other. This, he says, is reflected in lower sales figures for home printers in the last few years, although he conveniently doesn't mention online-printing services such as Snapfish et al. I know we've chased our collective tail here about the ubiquitous/disposable aspect of "post-analog" culture, but that comment, much as it sticks in my craw really the wrong way, can't be fully ignored. Perhaps the still image itself is losing some significance with a certain portion of the "always in motion" populace?


- Barrett
 
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I never really was around Polaroids other than the consumer stuff, but I'm a little sad at this announcement because I have a few family pictures in crumbling 665 form that are over 40 years ago. Only recently managed to get them scanned, which made me very happy as they're probably the only negatives that still exist of my great-grandmother and grandfather, neither of whom lived to see me.
 
Their children and grandchildren will regret not having those prints. My grandmothers both had shoe boxes full, as well as some big wall portraits. Now my son is the keeper of the archives. Some of those prints date from 1890 or earlier. In another hundred years will anybody even have a clue that there are photos on those silvery discs? Will you still be able to find the hardware and software to retrieve the images? Will the files be corrupted? Nobody seems to care!
 
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