NEWS: Shake Your Polaroids While You Still Can

GEEK: Shake Your Polaroids While You Still Can

Polaroid announced on Friday that they will close their instant film plants in the US, Mexico and the Netherlands, ending almost 60 years of production and a photography icon. President Tom Beaudo hopes these changes will help “…reinvent Polaroid so it lives on for the next 30 to 40 years.”

Instant camera and film enthusiasts won’t be left up a creek: Fujifilm will still produce its instant film, and Polaroid is currently seeking partners to purchase the rights to their own brand so that someone else can carry on the legacy.

punk wonders if there are any instant-film photographers on SG, and what their thoughts are.

i had been wondering when this was going to happen. it honestly seems like it's a little late in coming, but still kinda sad, for nostalgia's sake.

I'm totally sad! These are the best to have at parties. I hope someone decides to pick it up and keep making them.

Margot_Dent is an excellent Polaroidist, actually.

I never used polaroid, but this saddens me because it's a part of photography's history that seems to be passing. Like black and white film, which is now a pain to get or develop.

I have a newer Polaroid camera, but I wish I had my grandmother's old one, because that one had the film that still had the gelatin emulsion where you could fiddle around with it and make yr photo look like the cover to Peter Gabriel's Melt album.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

time to horde film for my holgaroid, apparently.

All the great films are getting discontinued; Kodak stopped producing Kodachrome and HIE some time ago. Terrible losses. You just can't get a lot of the same effects with digital.

Let me rephrase: you can get the same effects by spending much more time and/or money.

I believe Cherry is a polaroid enthusiast as well.

I think this is sad. I have fond memories of my grandparent's old polaroid camera.

I will miss those- and kind of made the photog work just a little bit still- digital is just too easy...and the peel off sheet was cool in it's own way

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

At least production hasn't entirely halted. They were saying the same thing about 120 film when I first got my Holga. I firmly believe that film will prevail.

Suck.

I have all sorts of Polaroid cameras. Now they're all paperweights?

its such bullshit. it pisses me off. do we really want to trust the digital world entirely?

I like the Polaroid film. Not so hot on their televisions though. I mean, if you're looking for something inexpensive, sure, it's great, but I'm not so impressed with the picture coloring. I thought it would be better than it is considering the source.

Damn, that my only camera i can still get batteries for

Kodak has also stopped making B&W paper, I believe, and Ilford is bankrupt, and worst of all, Agfa is out of business.

I loathe digital. Even my phone doesn't have a camera in it.

I agree. I hope. I work in a lab in Hollywood, and a lot of our clientele are still using, or just discovering Holgas. I've never used one myself, but they look like an awful lot of fun, light-leaks, weird double exposures and all. There's a bit of a resentment among a lot of professionals of being forced, economically, to go digital, and I've been saying for years, and still say, that demand for film has shrunk as much as it's going to. I haven't gotten tired of being wrong yet, but I'm getting there.

They did? If so, are you talking about for consumers because at the photography studios I have worked at we still get black and white paper from Kodak.