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Polaroid Can't Compete with Digital Cameras
mobydobius was among several who noted that poloroid can't keep up in the era of digital cameras. They filed for chapter 11, and have a billion dollars of debt. This deal gets them a bit of cash, but none of this seems surprising considering the cost of their instant film. In just a few short years, digital cameras knocked 'em down. There's a lesson here, but I think it's something like "Don't eat the Yellow Snow".
Do you first posters ever read?
Yes, they most assuredly have a digital camera division, and they are #5 in market share of digital camera sales... sheesh.
About a year ago I was in a situation were I needed a high quality print (hard copy) quickly. My options:
1. Use my digital camera and buy a photo printer.
2. Buy a polaroid camera and film.
3. Use my conventional camera and get I one hour processing at the drug store down the street.
My evaluation:
1. too expensive >$200 for printer
2. too expensive >$30
3. didn't have my camera with me so bought a disposable for $3.00 and developed for $6.99 (took a 1/2 hour).
Of course, as you scale option 1 would become the winner since polaroid film is (can't quite remember exactly) more than $2 per photo.
I expect that polaroid would still be in business if they got the cost down to about 50 cents per picture and sold disposable cameras. They did market the the fun-shot cameras but these are just plain stupid.
Side Note: I think digital cameras will be the next to go as dv cameras become more main stream. My sony dv camcorder takes as good a still shot as my olympus digital camera and it has that cool night vision.
I've worked for one publically held company in a similar situation. Debtor in possesion financing like this is a pretty good sign that someone sees some value in Polaroid's business but it isn't sufficient to make the company a going concern.
If you read the docs filed with the court very carefully and pay particular attention to any 'turn around team' that is brought in you should be able to figure out what is going on - check the 'turn around' management carefully - they're likely the undertakers.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
I have copies at home!
And that's one of the problems with Polaroids, in my experience... you can't have copies at home. Short of photocopying the original photo (which, let's face it, is ugly), you're stuck with a single copy of each shot.
I've had this sig for three days.
While this is not a largest market - its essential
product that will not go away. Polaroid backs and
polaroid professional film are a must in a studio
flash photography to get quick preliminary results
out of the same camera that will be used for the
real shoot.
So for better or worse they will have a litte
segment of the market forever:))))
i'm sorry, but i don't see where in that link anything was said about not being able to keep up in a digital market.
please, slashdot, let your users make up their own minds.
It's really too bad that polaroid is going out of business (well, filing bankrupt, anyway) because if you ask a lot of photographers, they will tell you that polaroid film has unique and beautiful saturation and color levels. The film often adds a hazy, almost surreal glow to it's pictures, and the photos have a filtered, artistic feel to them. The polaroid 'following' is almost that which is similar to the lomo following - practically a cult.
Personally I think that polaroid cameras, and the entire idea or polaroid pictrures, is also superb in that it can provide you with instant, hard proof of an event. Not to discount the quality of digital photography, but where I work (in the ER of a large hospital) polariod cameras have time and again allowed us to document abuse, sexual abuse, rape, accidents, and other events that would incur an unholy amount of paperwork were we unable to provide visual proof. I can assure you that many a polaroid photo has been used in saving many young girls', battered womens' and childrens' lives. A picture is worth a thousand words, and by being able to provide images of the bruise, wound, or overall condition right before it's covered up in bandages and dressings is important. Another thing that makes them so valuable is that they're point-and-shoot-and-develop; any nurse, doctor or tech can do it. I hope polaroid doesn't stop selling their film, at least!
I'm the unfortunate owner of one of their low-end "Fun! Flash 640SE" cameras.
My complaint with it has nothing to do with the low quality of the images (which look as though they are merely "interpolated" to 640x480 rather than actually BEING 640x480 as advertised) nor the cheap construction - I rather expected both for a ~$80 digital camera.
My complaint is their horrendous support for it. In my specific case, I'd emailed to them asking about protocol specs so that the gPhoto project might be able to put together a working driver. Now, the fact that they would give no useful information is, sadly, not all that unusual, but the form of the response was rather unimpressive. Over a month after sending the email, I got back a medium-sized email in reply. ALL BUT ONE LINE of that email was form-letter "thank you for contacting polaroid blah blah blah". The very first line was the only unique one. It said "that information is not available."
Given that Xirlink actually made the camera core, and there APPEARS to be some sort of business-stifling "Intellectual Property" agreement between Polaroid's digital division and that "ArcSoft" company that makes the obnoxious 'pretty bird' program (I forget the name of the windows 9x-only software - its mascot is a clown-colored bird...) that is supposed to keep it such that only the Polaroid/ArcSoft drivers are able to get to the camera, so I wrote back asking if they meant that they didn't HAVE the information (i.e. that I should contact Xirlink or ArcSoft instead) or that they were not allowed to release it. Over a week later, another one-terse-line-plus-formletter-crap response - "We do not make that information available." (which is not only somewhat rude but as before doesn't even answer the question.)
It was then that I figured they were screwed...if they had no interest in AT LEAST being polite to potential new markets, let alone actually encouraging their development, it seemed pretty obvious that other digital camera companies would roll over them, and, as others have already pointed out in this vein, considering how expensive and low quality their other "instant photograph" products were, that digital cameras would slowly devour that market as they got cheaper, and polaroid would have nothing to fall back on. Nice going, Polaroid.
(On the plus side, last I heard there was some progress in getting recognizeable images from the Polaroid "Fun!" cameras, so maybe I'll be able to actually use mine eventually...More info about the cameras here and, more currently, here.)
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The film for such a monster is exceptionally expensive, but the results are breath taking. I've used polaroid instant film backs for my Medium format and view cameras, which were invaluable in teaching me how to use the cameras effectivly.
Polaroids foray into digital was both ill managed and ill concieved, but to say that Digital has trumped Film is a mistake. It's much more valid to say that overfinancing your company on junk debt is a sure way to bankruptcy. So don't see this as the end of fil, film can do a lot that digital can't do and I'm sure that will be true for some time (10 years+). There isn't a digital camera out there that can do what a view camera can do in competent hands. This is not to dis digital, I love my digital camera with a passion too, but the color reproduction on it (yes, even in tiff mode) is not as nice.
Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Actually, we have one of those sticker cameras, and they are a great little toy.
The i-zone camera is fantastic to take with you when you're out with friends at concerts, dinners, ballgames, etc. The camera is very small and light, the lenses in the camera are really only designed for closeup portraits (they are fisheye lenses prefocused to about three feet), you get instant gratification, and you can stick the pictures into your photo album, scrapbook, on your dashboard, etc. They're great little souvenirs. Plus, it's a great icebreaker. If you happen to strike up a conversation with some strangers, you can offer to snap a picture of them, give it to them, and they'll have a great, personal souvenir of the event. It's a fantastic social toy.
But yes, the cost of the film is prohibitive. Polaroid film has always been expensive, unfortunately.
A little over a year ago, I worked at a subdivision of Polaroid here in Fort Wayne called "Polaroid Digital ID", which used to be an independant company that naturally was purchased by Polaroid.
They take professional-grade digital cameras (not polaroid at the time), and set them up with the software and machines to spit out real drivers licenses, which are actually used in several states to let you preview the picture, then have the license immediatly (or later from some states that choose to go the cheaper centralized-pringing-location route).
It was a pretty interesting job, working on ancient non-commented DOS-based C code that was thrown together by an independant contractor in a few weeks, stretched FAR beyond it's intention, with little company documentation available to new programmers. Then there was sitting at those card-producing machines, making up fake names and details, and watching the desk fill up with piles of real drivers licenses with pictures of action figures, hands, etc. in the image part of the card.
Then there was the corporate videos we all gathered to watch, the corporate panic showing through the idealistic industry-speak, and "great new ideas". I guess the sticky photos didn't sell to the kiddies as well as hoped. Our division was always mentioned as a relatively unimportant afterthought, and ironically now the Digital ID department is propably the most profitable part of the overall company what with all the demand for new ID's for company security and better watermarks on drivers' licenses.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
And their so-called "professional" cameras don't measure up.
Every so often, I need to re-evaluate my section's equipment at work to see what's better than what we have and what needs to be replaced. Since my section is traffic and we do accident investigations, we need good cameras. The problem is, Polaroid has NOTHING that compares to a decent 35mm setup with professional-grade color print film.Not in our budget, anyway.
Digitals won't do us any good either. First of all, the very best (and most expensive) has resolution that MAY (on a good day) compare to the ASA100 that I carry for daylight, and the picture quality goes all to hell after dark.
More importantly, there exists a thing called "Photoshop." The time will come, and soon, that any dumb-assed law school student summer intern at the ACLU can get a digital photo suppressed in court for that.
The legal test for admissibility of a photo in court is that it: A., be of probative value that exceeds whatever tendency it may have to inflame the passions of a jury; and B., it must be an accurate representation of the scene at the time that it was taken.[1] When digital photo manipulation is within the hands of anybody with access to a w4r3z site, the court is less likely to automatically assume B and less likely to believe us about it.
OTOH, with a camera using normal film, it's simple enough to produce a negative to show that the photos were unaltered. The judge can see the negative. The defense cartooney can see the negative. Procedures exist for the defense cartooney to have the negative examined by his own specialist. In other words, everybody involved can see that the photos were undoctored. With a digital, they'd all have to take my word for it.
And getting polaroid duplicates is a bitch.
[1] There are other factors, but they don't really affect this discussion. You can violate the Fourth Amendment with any camera.