Polaroid B.V. (trading as Polaroid) is a Dutch
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...
company that manufactures
instant film
Instant film is a type of photographic film that was introduced by Polaroid Corporation to produce a visible image within minutes or seconds of the photograph's exposure. The film contains the chemicals needed for developing and fixing the photogr ...
for its original cameras as well as for select
Polaroid Corporation
Polaroid is an American company best known for its instant film and cameras. The company was founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land, to exploit the use of its Polaroid polarizing polymer. Land ran the company until 1981. Its peak employment was 21,00 ...
instant cameras.
Polaroid B.V. was founded in 2008 as The Impossible Project (sometimes known as Impossible). In 2017, Polaroid Corporation's brand and intellectual property were acquired by Impossible Project's largest shareholder and the company was rebranded as Polaroid Originals.
[Polaroid Acquired by The Impossible Project’s Largest Shareholder]
Michael Zhang, Petapixel, 12 May 2017. Accessed 14 September 2017 In March 2020, Polaroid Originals was shortened to Polaroid.
History
![Polaroid Originals logo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Polaroid_Originals_logo.svg)
The Impossible Project was founded in 2008 after
Polaroid
Polaroid may refer to:
* Polaroid Corporation, an American company known for its instant film and cameras
* Polaroid camera, a brand of instant camera formerly produced by Polaroid Corporation
* Polaroid film, instant film, and photographs
* Polar ...
announced in February of that year that it would stop producing film for Polaroid cameras.
The founders are Florian Kaps, André Bosman and Marwan Saba. In June 2008, Kaps and Bosman met at the Polaroid factory's closing event and decided to found a company to produce materials for Polaroid cameras.
In October 2008, Impossible bought the production machinery from Polaroid for $3.1 million
and leased a building, called Building Noord, which was formerly part of the Polaroid plant in
Enschede
Enschede (; known as in the local Twents dialect) is a municipality and city in the eastern Netherlands in the province of Overijssel and in the Twente region. The eastern parts of the urban area reaches the border of the German city of Gronau ...
, Netherlands. The company has offices in Vienna, Berlin, New York City and Tokyo. It leased the Polaroid production plant and developed new instant film products for use in some existing Polaroid cameras, beginning mass production and sales in 2010. They generated US$270,000 in profit on US$4 million in revenue
and sold 500,000+ units.
In January 2012, the company announced that it and Polaroid would launch a range of collectible products, called The Polaroid Classic range, that originate from different periods of Polaroid's history. Between six and ten products will be released each year. In July 2013, Florian Kaps announced his 'retirement' from the project
and Creed O'Hanlon took over the role as CEO.
In December 2014, The Impossible Project announced that Oskar Smołokowski would be their new CEO and Creed O'Hanlon would become the Executive Chairman of Impossible's management board.
Polaroid (Impossible BV) has licensed its name to stores in Germany, Spain and London.
In May 2017, Impossible's largest shareholder acquired the brand and intellectual property of the original Polaroid corporation.
Impossible Project was renamed Polaroid Originals in September 2017.
[Polaroid lives again with new brand and OneStep 2 instant camera]
Daven Mathies, Digital Trends
Digital Trends is a Portland, Oregon-based tech news, lifestyle, and information website that publishes news, reviews, guides, how-to articles, descriptive videos and podcasts about technology and consumer electronics products. With offices i ...
, 13 September 2017. Accessed 14 September 2017[The first Polaroid instant camera in a decade is adorable]
Sean O'Kane, The Verge
''The Verge'' is an American technology news website operated by Vox Media, publishing news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts.
The website launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media' ...
, 13 September 2017. Accessed 14 September 2017[Polaroid Originals Launches with New OneStep 2 Camera and i-Type Film]
Michael Zhang, Petapixel, 13 September 2017. Accessed 14 September 2017 In March 2020, the company rebranded again, changing its name to simply Polaroid.
Products
Instant film
![New Polaroid branded instant film packet 2021](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/New_Polaroid_branded_instant_film_packet_2021.jpg)
Polaroid manufactures
SX-70 and
600
__NOTOC__
600 (Roman numerals, DC) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 600 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar ...
film, i-Type film, Go film, and large format 8x10 film. Unlike the original large format 8x10 film, the new 8x10 is an integral film with the positive and the negative kept together.
The wide-format Spectra film, produced between 2010 and 2019, was discontinued in October 2019 as a result of technical issues and motor jams from ejecting new film.
The SX-70, 600, and i-Type film all have the same format, 4.2 x 3.5 in (107 mm x 88 mm) with a 3.1 x 3.1 in (79 mm x 79 mm) square image area. The smaller-format Go film measures 2.623 x 2.122 in (66.6 mm x 53.9 mm) with a 1.851 x 1.811 in (47 mm x 46 mm) image area.
The integral zinc-chloride battery of the SX-70 and 600 is replaced with a
lithium-ion
A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also sees ...
system in Impossible remakes.
The i-Type and Go film, designed for use in cameras with integrated rechargeable batteries, lack the integrated battery of the SX-70 and 600 film. Current SX-70 films has a
film speed
Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A closely related ISO system is used to describe the relations ...
of ISO 160; all other lines are ISO 640.
Except for the 8x10 film (which comes in 10 sheets per box),
all films are sold in units of 8 exposures.
In addition to the usual white-framed film, Polaroid BV makes 600 and i-Type films with special frame colors, patterns, and/or shapes. These can be limited in quantity and become discontinued earlier. For the classical SX-70 and 600 series, many earlier "test versions" are listed as well.
Future and other formats
The Impossible Project has stated that they will not manufacture packfilm "in the foreseeable future", due to the investment required,
and cannot produce 4x5, Type 100, or Type 80 films, Polaroid 500 film and I-Zone film as they do not have the production machinery. These were disassembled along with the factories that used to produce the film when Polaroid filed for Chapter 11.
Impossible founder Florian Kaps left the company in July 2013 and later founded a coffee house and photo studio in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
called SUPERSENSE. Kaps revealed through a series of blog posts and interviews in 2016 that he had personally approached Fuji about acquiring their machinery in an attempt to rescue their soon-to-be discontinued
FP3000b and
FP100b packfilm products.
Kaps was unsuccessful in this pursuit, but motivated by his disappointment in Fuji's decision, he established the Analogue Product Institute (API) with the goal of "developing a NEW generation of analog instant packfilm
ndEstablishing a rich network of new suppliers, manufacturers and financiers from all over the world".
Hardware
Polaroid produces its own hardware and
refurbishes Polaroid Corporation cameras.
Instant Lab
The Instant Lab is a device that exposes digital images from a smartphone onto analog instant film, using the light produced by the screen.
The first generation of the Instant Lab was introduced in October 2013. It supports the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c and 5s, as well as the iPod Touch. The device was produced after a successful crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter.
Impossible Project introduced a new battery-less film cartridge design for use with the Instant Lab. The system, now known as the i-Type system, is a Polaroid 600-type cartridge stripped of the battery. The Instant Lab is internally-powered and does not rely on the battery to work. It works with all Polaroid square film formats, that is the original 600, the battery-less i-Type, and the
less sensitive SX-70.
A "universal cradle" was later released for Instant Lab 1.0 to accommodate different screen sizes on the
iPhone 6
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are smartphones that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the eighth generation of the iPhone, succeeding the iPhone 5, iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S, and were announced on September 9, 2014, and relea ...
and various Android phones. It turns the device into the newer Instant Lab Universal (2015), a new generation announced at
Photokina 2014
Photokina (rendered in the promoters' branding as "photokina") is a trade fair held in Europe for the photographic and imaging industries. It is the world's largest such trade fair. The first Photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, an ...
.
Hi•Print
Released in August 2020 the Hi•Print is a bluetooth portable printer that uses
dye-sublimation
Dye-Sublimation Printing (or dye-sub printing) is a digital computer printing technique that uses heat to transfer dye onto materials such as plastic, card, paper, or fabric. The sublimation name was first applied because the dye was considere ...
to create 2.1 inch x 3.4 inch prints with an adhesive backing to be used like a sticker. The printer uses 10 pack cartridges containing both paper and dyes. Much like the Instant Lab, the device is controlled via an app. Unlike Polaroid's other hardware, the Hi•Print is an entirely digital system.
Instant cameras
Impossible I-1
In 2016, Impossible started manufacturing its own instant camera, the Impossible I-1. It is a part of the company's original i-Type system, which uses its new i-Type film and 600 film. It features Bluetooth connectivity for remote control, double-exposure, advanced manual settings, among other features. It was designed by
Teenage Engineering
Teenage Engineering is a Swedish consumer electronics company and manufacturer founded in 2005 by Jesper Kouthoofd, David Eriksson, Jens Rudberg and David Möllerstedt and based in Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and Li ...
.
Polaroid OneStep 2
In September 2017, Polaroid Originals announced the Polaroid OneStep 2 instant film camera that uses its i-Type film and 600 film.
In the first version of this camera, framing is done by looking through a window on the back of the camera. Later in 2018, the company released a version with a built-in
viewfinder
In photography, a viewfinder is what the photographer looks through to compose, and, in many cases, to focus the picture. Most viewfinders are separate, and suffer parallax, while the single-lens reflex camera lets the viewfinder use the main ...
that makes framing more accurate, the OneStep 2 Viewfinder.
Polaroid OneStep+
In September 2018, Polaroid Originals introduced the Polaroid OneStep+ instant film camera that uses i-Type film and 600 film. The OneStep+ has built-in
Bluetooth wireless technology that allows the camera to be paired with the Polaroid Originals app on an
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
or
Android
Android may refer to:
Science and technology
* Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human
* Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system
** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
smartphone or tablet. This enables six new features: remote trigger,
double exposure
In photography and cinematography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more exposures to create a single image, and double exposure has a corresponding meaning in respect of two images. The exposure values may or may not be ide ...
,
light painting
Light painting, painting with light, light drawing, or light art performance photography are terms that describe photographic techniques of moving a light source while taking a long-exposure photograph, either to illuminate a subject or space, o ...
, self timer (with up to a 12 s countdown), manual mode (controlling aperture, shutter speed, flash intensity and photos ejection) and noise trigger.
The OneStep+ has an additional portrait lens, with minimum focusing distance of 30 cm. A slide toggle on the top of the camera switches between the two lenses.
The camera also includes a higher-capacity battery (recharged through a
microUSB
The initial versions of the USB standard specified connectors that were easy to use and that would have acceptable life spans; revisions of the standard added smaller connectors useful for compact portable devices. Higher-speed development of t ...
adapter), a built-in flash, and a viewfinder.
Polaroid Now
In March 2020, along with Polaroid Originals rebranding to Polaroid, the Polaroid Now was released. Much like the OneStep+ the Now uses 600 or i-Type film and features 2 stage Autofocus without the need to manually change focus points, a Self-timer and built-in flash. Unlike previous cameras, Exposure compensation is adjusted by holding the flash button and shown using the frame counter window. The Now comes in multiple colours with a more rounded design.
Polaroid Go
In April 2021, Polaroid announced the Polaroid Go camera along with Polaroid Go film. Both the Go camera and Go film are considered 'mini' versions of the 'Now' series. The camera measures 5.9 x 3.3 x 2.4 inches, with shutter speeds of 1/30 to 1/125 and a f/12 & f/52 34mm lens (35mm equivalent). The film measures 2.6 x 2.1 inches and is rated at 640 ISO.
Polaroid Now+
In August 2021, Polaroid unveiled the Polaroid Now+ camera, which is a revamped version of the 2020 Polaroid Now model. This version of the camera is compatible with both 600 and i-Type film, and comes with 5 lens filter accessories. The camera can also access two additional tools available through the Polaroid mobile app — aperture priority and tripod mode.
Media
The complexity of developing new generations of (prototype) instant film was depicted in the 2017 documentary ''
Instant Dreams
''Instant Dreams'' is a 2017 documentary directed by Dutch director Willem Baptist. It premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 18 November 2017 where it screened at Tuschinski Amsterdam in the Dutch Documentar ...
.'' Parts of the documentary were shot on location at Polaroid Originals 30 minute photo labs and production facilities in the Netherlands and Germany and includes Chief Technical Officer Stephen Herchen.
''An Impossible Project'' (2020)
is a documentary that follows Florian "Doc" Kaps and The Impossible Project from 2014, through the rebranding to Polaroid Originals, Supersense and Kaps' other projects. The film includes interviews with Christopher Bonanos, Kaps, Oskar Smołokowski and others.
References
External links
*
Polaroid EyewearThe Polaroid Cube
{{Authority control
Manufacturing companies established in 2008
Instant photography
Photographic film makers
Photography companies of the Netherlands
Dutch companies established in 2008