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You also can't point/shoot/eject/watch-it-develop like you could the original Polaroid. The Impossible film remains sensitive to light for at least 10-15 seconds if not longer, requiring hacks and tricks to eject it into either a box or under shade to make it develop properly at all.

Those issues have actually--finally--been resolved in the latest generations of Impossible's film; it only started shipping a few months ago.

https://magazine.the-impossibl...

I haven't tried the new color film, but I have used the "Generation 2.0" B&W film--which does appear to be as much of an improvement as they say.

all for vintage pictures that look like they're 40 years old the minute they fully develop.

I guess it's highly subjective, but that seems to be part of the appeal of Impossible's stuff. When I first saw the way my pictures on the colour film ended up, what really struck me was that it "didn't look real, it looked like a memory". And the experience of "watching a memory develop" was kind of profound.

I wondered whether the uncannily-matched fuzzy hypercolor in the way I experience memories and dreams was perhaps due to my having grown up with polaroids and basically been calibrated to that "being what memories look like". But then I actually found some old Polaroid pictures, and you're right: they weren't like that. So, I don't know where it comes from. But I like it.

The Impossible Project already produces it: https://shop.the-impossible-pr...

Hipsters love it.

polaroids are making a comeback of sorts: https://shop.the-impossible-pr...

Strange enough the first digital camera I used around 1994 was the Kodak DC-10.
The 333,000 pixels pictures could in my view easily compete with Polaroids.
I remember they (Kodak) made the first camera to match the resolution of a typical 35mm picture and it was an incredible 16 Mega pixel!
Now I have a 36 MP camera (Nikon D800) using that same 35mm frame :)
Later Kodak sold re-branded Minolta digital camera's, they probably had Kodak IP in them but the brand eventually went to Sony, Kodak lost their chance.

Polaroid-compatible film is again manufactured in their old factory by old and new staff:
http://www.the-impossible-project.com/?nointro=1

At the original factory for Polaroid media in The Netherlands some guys are again producing the 'film' you need to continue using your late model Polaroid cameras:
http://www.the-impossible-project.com/?nointro=1

Proper link to Impossible Project not included in the article. They're the people who bought the factory and now reproducing the film packs.

You can do D-76 processing in your bathroom with strong coffee, and the right off-the-shelf equipment.

You can do C-41 processing in your basement with the right chemicals and off-the-shelf equipment.

K-14 is another beast entirely and demands all kind of proprietary chems that you simply cannot find because they no longer exist. Even if you had the chemicals, you wouldn't have the equipment process the images properly.

What really needed to happen here was another instance of someone pulling together The Impossible Project which (thanks to a chance meeting at a bar) salvaged the last Polaroid processing equipment riiiiiiight before it was to be scrapped, and then reverse-engineered the chemicals needed to produce and develop the film.

(Note: I don't have any financial stake in their success, but I have to say the staff at the IP are amazing, and some of the nicest bunch of people I've dealt with in the photo world. Please give them your business.)

These guys, http://www.the-impossible-project.com/, purchased some old Polaroid manufacturing equipment and are making new film, mostly for artists. Perhaps someone will do the same for Kodachrome.

Ilford has attached their name to a business venture(The Impossible Project) to create a new instant film. Film is not dead; It's just resting.