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Polaroid: This Time It's Digital
MrSeb writes "Long before Facebook and Twitpic, photos were shared by simply handing someone a print. No camera made this easier than the once-ubiquitous Polaroid. Nothing represented instant gratification better in the film era than having a print develop before your eyes, ready to hand out in a minute. Unfortunately for Polaroid, the advent of digital photography sounded the death knell for its iconic instant print cameras. A brief reprieve in the form of inexpensive sticker-printing versions was ended by the cellphone camera revolution. Now, after a decade in remission, Polaroid has returned with a full-up digital camera that incorporates instant printing technology. The Polaroid Z340 is a 14MP digital with an integrated Zink-enabled (Zero Ink) printer. In a nostalgic touch, the new camera prints 3×4-inch images, the same size as the original Polaroid film cameras. Remarkably, all this fits in a one-pound, seven-ounce package, about the same weight as a mid-range DSLR."
That sounds good and I'm glad they're back. Though I wonder if coming back with an old fashioned analog polaroid might not sell as well. "The polaroid" was a name for a type of picture, a digital print isn't going to feel that unique.
But can it post those images to Facebook or Twitpic?
I have a soft spot for Polaroid cameras, having grown up back when they were all the rage (just after the dinosaurs died). The Land Camera was a lot of fun, back in the day. But, really, the only thing unique about this new camera is the printing, and no one wants to do that anymore.
The whole point of printing, way back then, was simply because it was the only way to share your images. That's no longer an issue. Even my mom's phone can send and receive photos. A print can only be shared with one person, while a digital image can be shared with an arbitrary number of people. There's just no advantage to being able to instantly print in this form factor.
#DeleteChrome
My first temptation was to scoff and say this is the digital age, why print them out.
Then I remembered 2 years ago, I got my dad this sony dyesub (Sony DPP-FP95, I think 97 is the newest). It prints pics perfectly, as good as the store. And because it's dyesub, it's superior to inkjet in every way: the dots blend together and aren't discrete, it has a clearcoat so no smudging, and the toner is dry on plastic so no printhead to dry out after a period of nonuse. It's the first digital gadget he really uses and actually loves: after every damn trip he sits down and make pics after pics. I know, I get sent a packet every so often with the sony branding.
If this polaroid is the same way, good on them. I can barely keep my digital pics organized, I don't expect older people to really grok photo organizing software either.
I've had various digital cameras since 2000. I got a DSLR May 2010, and have taken over 5000 shots with it, and I can probably count on two hands how many I have actually printed.
regarding the last 20 years of technology. Hope they make it, but can't see how this will work well for the consumer.
A real-life example - many years ago, My girlfriend and I used a Polaroid to manufacture child pornography of ourselves and some of our friends (we were all 15 at the time). It was a crime most heinous, but high-school kids don't deserve to be charged and have their lives ruined because of it.
But Ethanol, why not just have them printed at a drugstore?
I was a film developer at a drugstore. All images are archived (yes, even at the "print your own" kiosks) and every picture on a roll of film is seen by the developer, because we have to manually correct for CMY, density, and a host of other factors for maximum customer satisfaction - which means that your trick of taking a few "normal" pics followed by a bunch of nudes and finally more "normal" pics doesn't keep your dirty secrets from us. Fortunately, I saw a lot of nudes but never saw anything questionable.
While I can understand Polaroid trying to stay relevant in the (digital) photograph age, this would have very limited use. Use for some, but not many. I'm from the polaroid years and most photos handed to me just gather dust in some drawer or long-forgotten box in storage. I much prefer keeping them organized and tucked away on some storage disk where I can easily go down memory lane and look at them all from the comfort of my computer. That's just me.
I seriously doubt this camera will be around for more than a year.
Not all of us, that remember the Polaroid fondly, are dead yet :) It may be a small market. And shrinking, most assuredly. But if there's money to be made.....
Unfortunately, at 20$ for 30 sheets of the special photo paper it needs, I don't see it being successful.
I guess they're probably trying to use the classic inkjet printer selling scheme, where the printer is cheap but the cartridges are expensive... though their camera is 300$.
It can also print just 25 photos with its battery which is not clear if it's removable or not - strange number considering the paper is sold in packs of 30.
I it is cool but won't be the same unless you have to wave the picture to get it to dry so you can have a keepsake of your fat drunk uncle falling face first into the mashed potatoes at thanksgiving dinner
It's just a brand name now that's licensed out. Edwin Land's company is long gone.
Might be useful in niche markets such as film & television. Polaroids were often used to ensure continuity between takes and after breaks - take a picture of the actor before stopping and use it as a comparison point when it's time to get going again. Could use digital but this would just be easier.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Every comment here is about how this is for old, nostalgic folks and about how supreme digital images are. Everyone seems to be forgetting that sometimes it's useful to have a hard copy; especially an instant one. Simple, safe, and available for immediate use.
I'm not saying I would want one, but this seems like a nice niche product. I hope it helps Polaroid survive the cellular camera apocalypse we're living in.
http://www.pandigital.net/search.asp?Mode=Product&TypeID=26&ProductID=30
$.40 per 4x6. That's expensive as hell. I'll keep my color laser that costs me about $.14 per page for 8x11.
Or go to Walmart and borrow their dye sub printer for really nice 4x6's for less than a dime.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/High-Quality-4x6-Prints/5019648
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
No, clearly not. "As a travel photographer, I delight in sharing my images with people around the world as I photograph them."
wow. what progress we have made since the 1800s.
we have gone from 'a chicken in every pot' to 'a chicken in every cubicle'
i wish Bre would figure this out so Makerbot could start opening retail stores and getting insipid journalists to drool over his genius
Sorry, there's nothing really hot, in fact, nobody knew what a "creampie" was and only the sluts shaved their snatches or were on birth control at that age back then.
I can tell you that the pictures described above were 2 Polaroids of tits and 2 Polaroids of cocks, no actual sex. Later, when we were 17, 2 other couples joined my (different)girlfriend and I and we all had sex with each other in my friend's attic while her father slept downstairs. The only decent pic to come out of that was me copulating with my girlfriend, but there were no juicy close-ups found in professional porn. That girl and I later used her parents' VHS camcorder to record our porno onto an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cassette, but again there were no creative angles and I was pathetically limp with stage fright. We watched it once, then drove out to the country and broke it before throwing it into a lake.
The first pornographic video I made after I was 18 was using a webcam. It was very good and included a loud unprotected internal ejaculation, but the chick made me edit out the parts that made her "look fat." We were going to release it all over the internet but she freaked out after I told her Igot high on coke and showed it to all my friends, including one with Downs syndrome. I've only made one more vid since then - a decent but typical bedside video taken with a digital camera.
I am not in possession of any of the above, and to my knowledge nobody possesses them anymore. So sorry, until I can find a free-spirited woman who is okay with my idea of a Slashdot-themed porn video, the link to which will be first-posted to a future story, none of you will see my cock. I'm working on it, ladies.
-- Ethanol-fueled
makes a cheap consumer grade camera in the age when the market is flooded with with them by any and every electronics maker.
A statement of the form "nothing makes it easier than (brand)" is ad copy. It's a statement which means "we can't say it's better than the others, so we're going to make a statement which implies it's better than the others while it may only mean that all brands are basically the same" (after all, if they're the same, then nothing else is better).
Isn't it cheaper and easier just to freeze your relatives in carbonite? That way you can preserve your memories forever and avoid all the nasty Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.
Later, when we were 17, 2 other couples joined my (different)girlfriend and I and we all had sex with each other in my friend's attic while her father slept downstairs. ... That girl and I later used her parents' VHS camcorder to record our porno onto an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cassette ... We watched it once, then drove out to the country and broke it before throwing it into a lake.
Dude, that's disgusting. Where are your morals? I mean, really. Polluting a lake like that.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I am not in possession of any of the above, and to my knowledge nobody possesses them anymore. So sorry, until I can find a free-spirited woman who is okay with my idea of a Slashdot-themed porn video, the link to which will be first-posted to a future story, none of you will see my cock. I'm working on it, ladies.
Ask Kathleen Fent.
I suspect there is a market for this, but probably not in digitally savvy countries where everyone has a smartphone and can email the picture and put it on facebook before the Polaroid can even print out a single copy.
Except the United States market isn't so "digitally savvy". Here, a typical smartphone plan runs $70 per month, and even the cheapest plans from Virgin Mobile are $35 per month, compared to dumbphone plans that start at $7 per month. Someone who doesn't print a lot of photos might come out ahead by buying a dumbphone and a separate printing camera as opposed to a smartphone.
Plus, you're limited to a tiny print compared with a small printer.
As I understand it, you can enlarge a digital photo later on a full-size printer.
The problem comes when your dye-sublimation printer is also dye-subliminal: due to a flaky network connection, it quickly appears and disappears in your operating system's list of available printers. I seem to remember reading reviews in MacUser about such printers.
It is impressive how thoroughly bad this new camera is.
It makes prints every bit as bad as the original dry polaroid (which was horrible even for its time). This is some fake printing technology where the temperature and speed of the head create a small gamut of colors and brightnesses or something.. really really bad idea for a printing technology. AND it's super expensive, just like the original.
For $30 a pack, they could have put a real dye sublimation printer in there and had the world's most beautiful prints.
Instead it's the damn 70's all over again...
Also it's so that Roy Batty can chew out Leon for leaving behind his precious photos.
Tube long ago I was a Polaroid and novelty at the time, I'd like to have that camera pictures again http://segurosdecochebaratosya.com/
You know why I finally spent thousands on a DSLR, lenses, flashes, and so forth?
Because tech -- host computers, sensors, camera hardware -- had finally advanced far enough so that I wouldn't ever have to [make a / order a / send for a] print again.
Now Polaroid wants to sell me a camera that... that...
BWHAHAAHAHAH
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is so sad, at the right price this could transform the market. Even the tiny old (2"x3") prints are really fun, and nearly everyone is amazed at the simplicity of the system.
Without the patent the market price would be 1p-5p a print and would be worth billions. With the patent and 50p for a print it is a total flop.
While 20$ for 30 photos might seem expensive for most smartphone photographers out there, it is at least 10 times cheaper than some film, so it actually pays off to use Polaroids for test proofing scenes that you want to photograph using a medium or large format film camera. Of course, not everybody shoots film or anything bigger than 35mm nowadays, but there is a market out there, and these prices are a steal for the people in that niche.
Nah, "Smartass is the step before innovation!"
(Hi Mods. Parent was talking about counting in binary on his hands.)
1 2 4 8 16 --> up to 31 on hand 1, 32 64 128 256 512 --> 1023 was what your snide critic was saying.
But! Just roll your hand (either up, or if the topology switch doesn't bother you, roll it over) and you can keep counting!
1024 2048 4096 --> 8191 right? Then *raise an arm* from 90 degrees in front of you to like 45 degrees or something. I'm starting to get a little fuzzy but I'll try. 16384 32768 65536 --> 131,071? Then *cross your arms* I think gets you to 262,143 or such, and I'll end there!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Someone may, possibly, conceivably, maybe, figure out another use for a grossly overpriced junk camera? But this thing is intended for grandma, who can barely figure out any technology more advanced than a toaster. Press the button, look, you've got a picture. You know... a "real" picture, one that's printed on paper. So the quality is pretty bad, her eyesight isn't what it used to be anyway. Button. Picture. Oh hell, she's trying to take a picture with the toaster again.
Look, I'm not trying to be snarky, here. That's the one market. It's the only market for this kind of bizarre modern retro gadgetry.
Thought this was cool until I saw the picture, obviously they are using the same industrial designers as back in the 60's.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
So, how much does the ZINK paper cost? I imagine it's probably not exactly cheap. . . give away the printer, sell the ink^h^h^h^h paper.
I think one of the things that did the classic polaroid in was that those insta-developing glossy photos were pretty expensive. I don't fully recall, but seems like the cartridges of polaroid "film" were something like a dollar per picture or maybe a bit more. I mean, that's not completely out of reach of the public, of course, but with a $200 digital camera you can take thousands of photos at no additional cost, whereas it would cost you thousands of dollars to take thousands of pics with a polaroid.
I would suppose with this new digital polaroid, you probably have the option of only printing out the ones you really want to print, and just save the rest to an SD card like any other digital camera, so that should help control costs for their customers and encourage them to take lots more pictures, and perhaps even decide to print more.
This isn't a company that sold out or moved manufacture. The company has gone bankrupt a couple of times, been bought and sold a couple of times, and has long since sold off all manufacturing. Now they mainly rent out the Polaroid name to other companies.
I put ink-less receipts in my wallet and a couple days later they're faded or blank (god help me if I get audited). Will the same thing happen with these as well?