Slashdot Mirror

I'm actually rather surprised that nobody (especially Polaroid of all companies) has even attempted a digital camera with tiny printer built-in and enough film for a dozen photos.

http://www.polaroid.com/polaroidtwo/gb/

They have the Pogo: http://www.polaroid.com/global/detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441769154&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302037126&bmUID=1243376081801&bmLocale=en_US Camera and printer in one. Plus the printer uses no ink. I have no idea how that works, but apparently it does.

If I'm on say a job site with a client and wish to document a condition I can take two pictures and both parties can leave with a hard copy. Digital cannot accomplish this.

My cell phone can accomplish this via Pogo http://www.polaroid.com/CES/ProductDetail.jsp?folder_id=2534374302037098&prod_code=PG001, and I can send copies to the home office, the client, 7 contractors to get bids, and tweet it at the same time.

Already exists.

That chick looks like a tranny.

Anyway, how much does the ink/paper cost?

Already exists.

When will Outkast learn:
"Do not shake or bend developing pictures."

http://www.polaroid.com/service/userguides/photographic/one600classic_ug.pdf
or
http://74.125.93.104/search?q=cache:TMzxjpjAo28J:www.polaroid.com/service/userguides/photographic/one600classic_ug.pdf+do+not+shake+site:polaroid.com&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

They still sell them.
http://www.polaroid.com/products/product_list.jsp?&sc=Handheld

No general-purpose algorithm is going to expand the cloud of smoke preferentially in one direction, and then suddenly terminate the billowing edge of the smoke cloud against a clear sky, because general-purpose image enhancement algorithms do not model the behaviour of billowing smoke clouds. No general-purpose algorithm is going to cut out whole buildings and transplant them perfectly to other parts of the neighbourhood, because general-purpose algorithms do not recognize where buildings start and end against a backdrop of other buildings.

4x5 film doesn't come in rolls, it comes in sheets that you load into a holder, one to a side. You have to load the film in complete darkness, and hope that the holders won't leak. When taking the picture, you focus with a groundglass that is situated where the film will be, then close the lens, insert the holder into the camera, and pull out the dark-slide, and then take your exposure, and you should be taking lots of notes. Because there is so much manual labor that you have to do for each exposure, there is a whole different mindset to Large Format Photography, you will go out and expect to take a half dozen exposures, while the digital camera encourages the practice of just shooting anything and everything, and then sifting through the thousand or so exposures for the good ones.

The owner of a camera shop near where I live once had the opportunity to use a Large Format Polaroid camera, which exposes Polaroid fim that is 20 by 24 inches. He described it this way: "Take your megapixels and shove them up your ass!"

Finally, a compact camera. Beats lugging around a 235 lb Polaroid for those snapshots you always want to take on vacation.

"In 1948, Adams became a consultant to Edwin H. Land, inventor of the Polaroid instant photography system, for whom he rigorously tested new films and products. Throughout the ensuing 35 years, Adams took hundreds of instant photographs and wrote thousands of letters and memoranda to report his findings and recommendations to Polaroid. The photographs that are presented in this exhibition, many of which have never before been shown in Europe, are culled from this extensive body of work housed at the Polaroid Collections and Archives in Massachusetts."

"Informative"? This is nothing new.

The silver salts used in black and white photography have a known life span of over 100 years. Instead of dyes, use silver halides! A problem may lie with Polaroid patents.

A small printer that docks to a camera would really make a Polaroid camera obsolete.

Polaroid Instant Camera: $25 - $50
Polaroid Instant Film: ~$1 a shot

Digital Camera: $250+
Digital Printer: $250+
Digital Printer Consumables: $1+ a print

ps See http://www.polaroid.com/polinfo/digital_printing

I found a press release date January 5, 1998 on their website entitled "Polaroid Introduces Improved PDC Digital Camera". So it would seem that they did try to move aware from their instant film image and into the digital media. The problem is Sony, Canon and others are putting out top-notch digital cameras. How can Polaroid compete against that?

If they can make a completely disposable instant camera along the lines of the disposable 35MM, they might have a sustainable niche.

It's the Polaroid PopShots (their biCapitalization, not mine). It's been around for over a year now, and retails for about $20 USD (which is only 5-10 bucks cheaper than the basic Polaroid OneStep that most people are familiar with). I don't know how well it's selling.

This is symptomatic of Polaroid problem, really. There are half-dozen posts in this thread proposing a "miracle product" to get Polaroid back on track. The problem is, Polaroid already makes most of those products. They make digital cameras. They make photo-printers. They make high-end cameras with good lenses. Etc, etc. They even produce (in a joint venture with Olympus) a hybrid camera that stores pictures digitally and prints them on Polaroid film. It's a cool concept that nobody (even here on a gadget-happy site like Slashdot) seems to know about. Their R&D department isn't the problem.

Polaroid makes the stuff, they just can't seem to market it worth a damn. They're either going after the wrong market niche, or just not advertising at all. They only people who knew Polaroid was making new cameras were kids (the iZone is Polaroid's biggest seller now) and people who work in camera stores (that's my excuse).

True, but not the case here. Polaroid also makes digital cameras. Hell, they even made a digital picture frame and digital microscopes! Go see for yourself on www.polaroid.com.

I don't think their problem is living in the past. Their problem is probably something like bad marketing or something.

Polaroid is a cheap way to take pictures in the short term. The camera's never get outdated (I'm using a 1968 Land camera witht he peel apart 669 film). Yeah, a $1 a shot is a lot, but compared to the bleeding edge Casio QV-10 that I paid $450 in 96 (320x240), I think the initial $20 laydown for a Polaroid camera is well worth it.

I think form factor is really the biggest limitation of the format. Quality is acceptable, and with the right film, you can do some really artistic things to the print. (Emulsion/Negative transfers for 669, swirly-Van-Gogh effects with SX-70).

Getting an Autographed Polaroid, and knowing that there is only one, and that it's unique has value to me as well (unless they used a slide enlarger to run off a few hundred)

You have to use www.polaroid.com.

New i-Zone Instant Camera with Radio
Take i-Zone sticker pictures and listen to your favorite bands.

If they put that kind of crap on their site, they've got problems indeed...

If you look at the pole, which is not shiny, the artifact that an earlier poster pointed to has color fringing. Since the pole is not shiny, your explanation doesn't explain that behavior. Since other nearby objects are not fringed, it can't be a parallax thing or poor registration of the color layers.

It's not movement, since the grass blades in the foreground are blurred without any coulour fringe whatsoever.

That said, the method used is just like Technicolor, except that it doesn't use dichroid mirrors.

And one will also recall Polaroid's polavision (official dope), which used a film striped with RGB filters. But videocams made that obsolete overnight.

--

If you look at the pole, which is not shiny, the artifact that an earlier poster pointed to has color fringing. Since the pole is not shiny, your explanation doesn't explain that behavior. Since other nearby objects are not fringed, it can't be a parallax thing or poor registration of the color layers.

It's not movement, since the grass blades in the foreground are blurred without any coulour fringe whatsoever.

That said, the method used is just like Technicolor, except that it doesn't use dichroid mirrors.

And one will also recall Polaroid's polavision (official dope), which used a film striped with RGB filters. But videocams made that obsolete overnight.

--

I would suppose this to be an example of hacker fears - I would assume that they figured without server scripts they'd be that much less hackable...