PBS affiliate WGBH recently took viewers into The Polaroid Project, a new exhibition at the MIT Museum. Described as 'being at the intersection of art and technology,' Polaroid revolutionized photography with the launch of its first instant camera in 1947.
The exhibit showcases notable Polaroid photography from past decades, as well as a number of Polaroid instant cameras and instant film packs. Curator Willian Ewing in talking about the technology told WGBH correspondent Jared Bowen:
It was a very small thing you could hold in the hand, but you had to participate in the making of the picture. The thing whirred and clicked. The picture came out and developed slowly. And that was described as magic.
The Polaroid Project Part I will be live until February 23 followed by Part II from March 9 to June 21.
President Jimmy Carter thought the formal traditional oil painting (portrait) of the president was getting quite expensive as well as time-consuming. So he thought a photograph would do. So Ansel Adams, who donated his time and expertise for free, took the formal portraits of president Jimmy Carter, and vice president Walter Mondale, with a monster Polaroid camera that produced 20"x24" prints in 75 seconds.
I have the Polaroid Captiva, but I can't find film for it anymore.
My father went to summer camp with Ed Land in the 1920s. Later Land asked my father to invest in a new invention - an instant camera. My father thought it sounded unworthy and refused.
He did eventually have a Polaroid camera and took thousands of instant family photos with it.
You should check out some of the work that was done on Polaroid film in various formats by some of the greats. Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Andy Warhol, and David Hockney are just a few of the artists who did great stuff with Polaroid.
moimoi The stuff that was based on the SX-70 film did leave a lot to be desired. The 4x5 B&W film was very good and it produced very usable negatives. (Yeah, there was a pull apart stock that produced a print and a negative) The 8x10 and larger films were magnificent.
Just because your experience is with SX-70 and Fuji instant film does not mean that the Polaroid films were all that bad. Don't judge Polaroid based on current Fuji output.
Current Fuji output outshines anything to come out of Polaroid itself in decades. Impossible has gotten a lot better, but it still isn't as good as it was back in the '70s.
Elsa Dorfman used a large format cameras to produce giant color polaroid prints that are technically excellent. However, the consumer film that went into the SX70, Spectra and One Step produced blurry images with less than accurate colors. Polaroid's previous generation of black and white peel apart film was far superior to the color stuff. Unfortunately, that B&W film is now long gone and the machinery that made it was sold for scrap. There isn't enough demand nowadays to justify making new equipment to produce peel apart films so they are now the thing of history.
You are only thinking of the little point and shoot Polaroids. However, Polaroid Type 055 - a large format, B&W material that produced by a positive and a printable negative from the name shot - was fantastic. I used loads of it. It had a beautiful long tone scale and plenty of detail. Many, many of Ansel Adams massive prints were made from Type 055 negatives.
"...While on vacation with his family, his 3-year-old daughter asked him why she couldn't see the picture he had just taken of her. Quite an obvious question for a 3-year-old toddler. But Land was a visionary man, and he started cooking the idea of an instant camera that very same day" (https://www.lightstalking.com/polaroid-camera/) The rest is history.
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The updates bring a number of new and improved features to Photoshop CC 2020, while also bringing some of the desktop features of Photoshop to Photoshop for iPad.
Today, Moment, a company that creates gear and accessories for photographers and filmmakers, released 67mm filters and a mount that works with any modern smartphone.
The 2020 Sony World Photography Awards recently removed active links to images from three separate finalists due to their 'sensitive nature. All have a common theme: the Hong Kong protests. The move has raised concerns about possible censorship.
Join seasoned wildlife photographer Adam Jones as he tries out Canon's high-speed flagship in South Texas, where a colorful range of bird species occupy the inland habitats and coastal regions of the lower Rio Grande Valley.
The X-T200 is Fujifilm's most promising entry-level camera in some time. With a feature set tailored to casual photographers who might bring the camera on a trip somewhere warm and sunny, well, we did just that.
Nikon's combined the best of its DSLR and mirrorless cameras into one tough-built body, equally well-suited for stills as it is for video. For effectively modernizing one of the brand's all-star camera lines, it receives our silver award.
Firmware version 3.00 for the Z6 and Z7 camera systems brings major new and improved features, including updates to the AF tracking implementation, expanded CFexpress support, animal-detection autofocus and more.
Earlier this week, Judge Joseph Farah ruled in favor of Jason Harrison. He was arrested for a legal flight at a Genessee County park (Michigan, U.S.) in December 2018. The ruling is expected to set a precedent for the rest of the United States.
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Three new lenses from Leica for the M system, including a pair of limited edition Safari options (28mm F2 and 75mm F2) and a silver version of the 75mm F2.
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It's not cheap and the initial setup is time-consuming, but the Loupedeck+ improves on its predecessor in some important ways and makes a lot of sense for those with demanding photo editing needs.
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