News & Events in the World of Photography, Printing and Design

Polaroid photography fades to black

17th Feb 2008

Although the Polaroid company still wants to be in business for the next 30 to 40 years, instant Polaroid cameras have already ceased production and the, factories that make Polaroid film are shutting down. Thus existing stocks of film aren’t expected to be available beyond 2009.

The death of Polaroid’s instant photography technology has been captured all over the web across tech sites galore. However the end of the Polaroid era is of no surprise to anyone familiar with digital cameras and those postage stamp sized memory cards.

A revolution when it was first invented, allowing photographs to be developed within minutes of their being taken, the Polaroid camera was the gadget to have in the 20th century.

Founded in the 1930s by Edwin Land as a company that made polarising sunglasses, the first Polaroid camera was launched in 1948, but it was the SX-70 model camera that took the world by storm when it was launched back in the 1970s.

Many will fondly remember the Polaroid camera, with PC World compiling an article complete with Youtube-sourced TV ads from the 70s, 80s and 90s showing just how easy the camera was to use, and just how quickly photographs would develop, although naturally the ads showed photos developing far faster than in real life, which in real time is around 90 seconds.

Aficionados talk of ‘peeling’ the back of earlier Polaroid photos and feeling the tingling, burning sensation of the developing chemicals, but later models eliminated the peeling process, ejecting a photo that developed before your eyes, slowly gaining more colour until the photo was completely ready.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time Polaroid has gone out of business. Back in 2001, Polaroid went bankrupt thanks to missing out on the digital photography revolution, and was purchased by US based Petters Group for hundreds of millions of dollars, keeping the factories open and continuing the production of cameras and film. However, now those film producing factories in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands will close, with hundreds of employees set to lose their jobs. Such is the change in the world of photography.

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