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Polaroid Can't Compete with Digital Cameras

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the end-of-an-era dept.

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".

9 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Oh, well... by Derek+Pomery · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They do, expensive ones. Polaroid has been on the ropes for a while now. Articles examining this have pinned it on a failure to innovate.
    No major changes in their models, and no improvements in prices.
    Main moral to gain from this is don't sit back and relax just because you (were) on top...

    --
    -- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.
  2. They were headed down by sadclown · · Score: 4, Interesting
    In just a few short years, digital cameras knocked 'em down.

    Actually, if you read yesterday's nytimes article, the company had been headed down at least since 1988, (before digital cameras) when they were first in debt. Their demise is attributed not just to a failure to keep up with digital, but to a string of bad business decisions.


    Besides, even before digital cameras they had to compete against disposables and the general drop in camera prices and features.

  3. Just a little Story by m_evanchik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Had a party last night.

    Took polaroids and had a digital:

    The digital was untouched and the polaroid took 405 pics before we ran out of film.

    Polaroids are instant (no shutter lag), give you a hard, permanent picture within seconds.

    Polaroid's current problems are due to a load of debt assumed in 1988 due to a hostile takeover bid.

    However, assuming money is not an object, give people at a party a choice between taking polaroids and using a digital and the polaroid will win out.

    I just wish that polaroid film was cheaper. It is a superior technology to digital in many ways. Sure it is an "analog" technology versus a digital one, but the world is analog not digital.

    BTW, didn't get any good chick pix that I can publish, so don't rub it in.

    --

    evanchik.net

  4. Re:they did themselves in by ghoti · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Forget about Polaroid CAMERAS. They're consumer products, and crappy ones, too. But you can use Pola-Backs with almost any medium or large format camera (and there are even adaptors for 35mm cameras).
    So you set everything up (including your Hasselblad or whatever camera you use), and put on the Pola-Back and take a test-shot. Now you can check the lighting, light-temperature (within certain limits), composition, etc. That is much easier than while looking through the viewfinder, and you're less likely to miss something. You can also put shots from several different setups side by side and compare them. And the photographer can retain a crude idea of the image if he gives the negatives or slides away.
    But there are also Polaroid black/white films where you get a negative in addition to the positive (the print). You can use that to make an enlargement - I have already seen a very expensive, very well done calendar done entirely using Polaroid films.
    So there are a lot of things you can do with Polaroids (much more than just what I mentioned here) - just forget about cheap plastic cameras and i-Zone crap!

    And that is the market where digital cameras are no real competition. Yes, there are digital backs etc. But there are things you just can't do with digital cameras. And with the speed of current scan-backs, I wouldn't be surprised if photographers still used a Polaroid before making that final scan (a scan-back scans the are where the image is normally projected onto the film).

    --
    EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
  5. A digital Polaroid story (aka Polaroid suicide) by aussersterne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Don't forget, they have had a lot of name recognition for "instant photos" on the world market. They could have had a big jump on the rest when it came to marketing digital camera technology.

    That's why I bought a Polaroid digital camera a few years ago when I was looking that (at the time) cost me $350.00. I figured that if anyone was going to take care to make a nice digital camera it would be Polaroid, considering the importance of their name and their stake in instant photography. I had been a long time Polaroid film camera user, and felt like I'd be willing to pay a little more (once again) for someone who did instant (this time digital) photography properly.

    The camera was a total piece of 1-megapixel-shit. It took horrible, grainy, blurry pictures whose colors bled into each other. The chromatic aberration was something to behold, the hue reproduction was nasty (everything was brown!), the flash was weak, and it would eat a set of lithium AA batteries in only about 10 minutes of use. The worst part of it was that the construction was horribly cheap -- battery and connector doors were like parts of a McDonald's happy meal toy -- made of thin, brittle plastic and held in place by friction alone.

    Figuring that maybe I had just been unlucky and got ahold of a lemon or a preproduction model or a customer return or something, I took it back and exchanged it for another. Same deal. I was about to give up on digital photography. It still hadn't occurred to me that Polaroid was at fault for putting out a truly lousy product.

    Then I had a chance to work with a friend's Olympus digital camera in the same price range. It took great pictures that really completely outdid 35mm consumer-level products. Compared to the Polaroid camera I had bought, it had a similar 1-megapixel resolution, had more features, had removable/expandable memory (via SmartMedia), was built very solidly, and was about the same price as the Polaroid with batteries lasting about four times longer.

    I bought the Olympus camera and was thrilled at the first download of photos, which were TRULY great (esp. the macro shots) and was able to compare and see just how awful the Polaroid's photos were.

    Since then, a number of friends who were considering Polaroid digital cameras have looked at my early shots and decided to buy Olympus instead. And last year, when I wanted to upgrade to a higher resolution camera to get 8x10 photos out of it, I ended up going with a Nikon Coolpix without even considering Polaroid after using their film cameras for years.

    With their initial foray into digital, they lost me and many of my friends as customers. Too bad they didn't take the technology more seriously.

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
  6. Come now, I know you mean to be funny, but... by FallLine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    there is a world of difference between new technology making old technology obsolete through superiority and new technology making traditional methods of protecting intellectual property harder to enforce.

    Digital cameras, and other techological advancements of its kind, provide a superior and more economical service to all necessary parties. In other words, they are both superior and exist organically, that is to say, without leaching off the outside world.

    "Advancements" such as filesharing certainly disrupt, but they do not necessarily provide a complete solution for all involved--even for its own continued existence (e.g., once novel IP dies, the need for those kinds of services dies). This much simply is not arguable. What is arguable, is whether or not such a solution is even POSSIBLE. I lean strongly towards the IMPOSSIBLE side, but nonetheless I think even the IP owners' critics should be aware of the difference.

    1. Re:Come now, I know you mean to be funny, but... by dachshund · · Score: 5, Interesting
      "Advancements" such as filesharing certainly disrupt, but they do not necessarily provide a complete solution for all involved--even for its own continued existence (e.g., once novel IP dies, the need for those kinds of services dies).

      Polaroid went bankrupt because their business model had lost its value. That is, with chipmakers providing a form of nearly infinitely reusable film, the model of selling expensive, single-use film was outmoded.

      Similarly, you could say that the RIAA's business model is becoming outmoded-- that is, holding an expensive single-provider monopoly on the distribution of easily-duplicated bits doesn't work anymore. It's unfortunate that this fundamentally flawed model may be the only way to justify the creation of content (although many would argue with that.)

      The shame of the situation is that yes, the file-sharing networks might rely on the RIAA for the content they distribute (although I'd imagine there would still be music in a post-RIAA world, don't you think?). But that doesn't necessarily mean that the RIAA's business model can continue to exist. I'm not sure that the deliberate maintenance of a broken business model through increasingly strict copyright laws is going to save anyone.

      Early music companies distributed music via telephone wires, and charged for it. That method of distribution was soon outmoded by radio-- the problem being, of course, that it was damn hard to charge for a broadcast service. But business soon found a way to deal with the situation, and now we can listen to free radio anytime we want. Rather than come to that solution, the industry could have attempted to collect mandatory license fees for home radio sets. If it had been powerful enough, it probably would have gotten the laws passed, and they would have probably been flouted and eventually reversed. But thankfully, we came to another solution.

  7. Re:they did themselves in by Grayswan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So there are a lot of things you can do with Polaroids

    If you feel compelled to adjust your projector without instrumentation, you can easily tell if it close to correct by taking a Polaroid color photograph (without flash) of the 11 step crossed gray scale on Video Essentials or AVIA. Although Polaroid color film is balanced for 5600 degrees Kelvin, the difference between the film primaries and the proper CIE tristimulus filter response causes a display which has been properly adjusted to D65 (6500 degrees Kelvin) to photograph well. Polaroid color film has is very sensitive to color temperature errors and cannot be fooled. The eye is easily fooled, and most people judge display color temperature between 9000 and 13000 degrees to be perfect.

    Any color tint that you observe in the black and white gray scale pattern is the error in your white balance. If the photograph is blue, you have too much blue. Either decrease blue, or increase red and green. If the photograph is magenta, decrease red and blue or increase green. If the photograph is yellow, increase blue or decrease red and green.

    http://www.thebigpicturedvd.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/ dc board.cgi?az=show_thread&om=1513&forum=DCForumID24 &archive=yes

    In a perfect world, intelligent life doesn't evolve.

    --
    If you open your mind too wide, people will throw trash in it.
  8. all your base... by jonbrewer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With real estate prices as they are in Cambridge, I bet Polaroid could cut a chunk of debt just by renting or selling off their land. They have properties in some very desirable locations.

    Commercial space in Cambridgeport rents at around $60/sq foot, when it can be found. Even with the current "recession" prices haven't budged. Hop on over the the WSJ for some insight.

    With their name, their engineering talent, their land (to provide some cash) and a reasonable restructuring, Polaroid could relaunch themselves as a player in the digital market in under two years.