Posted on 05/31/2009 10:18:02 AM PDT by Peter Horry
ENSCHEDE, Netherlands — In this small town just across the border from Germany, a small group of Dutch scientists and one irrepressible Austrian salesman have dedicated themselves to the task of reinventing one of the great inventions of the 20th century — Polaroid’s instant film.
Digital cameras are ubiquitous, cheap and easy to use — the reasons Polaroid stopped making the film last year — so what this group in Enschede is attempting may seem hopelessly retrograde.
But to them, that is exactly the point. They want to recast an outdated production process in an abandoned Polaroid factory for an age that has fallen for digital pictures because they think people still have room in their hearts for retro photography that eschews airbrushing or Photoshop.
(Excerpt) Read more at postandcourier.com ...
Ah yes, the good old days of waving the picture impatiently until the picture comes in.
My experience with Polaroid was with both the type that you peel (camera had a timer on the back to let you know when to peel off the picture) and the “SX-70” type film in a Polaroid One-Step in the 1980’s. In both cases, the images looked great for about 10 years, then faded away.
Lost a lot of good memories to Polaroid film.
I’ve got polaroid pics 40 years old that still look great. If you keep them in a photo album, they don’t fade. Its the light that fades them.
Anonymous and untraceable, which makes them valuable in certain applications.
I didn’t even know they quit making the film. I remember the last time I used mine. It was circa 1999. I needed some black and white photos for a project and the only black and white film I could find anywhere was for the old polaroid. I was really shocked that you couldn’t just walk into a drugstore and pick up a couple rolls of black and white film for my old 35mm.
Interestingly (or not,) I have an album of Polaroid Swinger pictures that look as good today as the day I shot them as a boy (1968-69.) The process was messy, but the pictures are as archival as the ones I shot with a Kodak, paid for processing and waited 3-7 days to see.
I am reminded of a episode in Air Force training (Sheppard AFB), where we had a guy who spent ten weeks there and had probably made over 120 Polaroid pictures of three different girls he met in that time...in various poses. He graduated the week prior to me....and his wife from Kentucky came out to pick him up. For some reason, he’d dragged down all his personal stuff...making three or four trips to the car...when the wife must have opened something to find the Polaroids. The wife didn’t say nothing, but about 30 minutes after they left base and were on the interstate...she stopped at some rest stop...and then took off for Kentucky without him. He came back to base that night. We chipped in ten bucks each and he bought a bus ticket to Kentucky the next day. Never knew what happened after that point.
Very strange.My Dad worked for Polaroid for almost 40 years and one of his responsibilities was to test new film and cameras.As a result,we have *thousands* of Polaroid prints (family pictures) from the 50's,60's and 70's and most of them (not all,mind you) still look darn good.
Don’t polaroid photographs have some special use in alternative medical diagnoses?
I don’t know what went wrong with ours then. Mom’s are the peel away type, and she keeps them in albums. Our pictures from the late 60’s through the late 70’s look terrible, with little to no color left in them.
My One-Step (SX-70) shots have been kept in a scrapbook and packed away in a box and look nearly as bad. My prints made from my 35mm SLR from the same period of time look great.
Other than light, what else would cause this?
Not sure.If you asked me that 20 years ago when my Dad was alive and neurologically intact I could get the answer from him.
Gee I have an old Impulse in mint condition. Don’t know how old it is.
Quit using it when the film could no longer be found.
All photos fade with age.
They need to be scanned pronto.
some last 100 years, some 10, depends on the lab that did your processing, but they will all fade.
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