Released in 1971, the Polaroid Big Shot was a funky, green plastic camera that was built for one thing: portraits. The plastic behemoth is simply designed, using a fixed focus 200mm, single-element plastic meniscus lens.
Photography has never been faster to made and share than in our modern "insta" era, but over half a century ago, it was American scientist Edwin Land and his company Polaroid that helped the industry take a giant step forward in speed and ease. PBS NewsHour just aired this 5-minute segment that looks at Polaroid's history and influence.
Polaroid Originals—the artist formerly known as The Impossible Project—made a sad announcement on its blog yesterday. After determining that the wide-format Polaroid Spectra cameras out in the wild "are now coming to the end of their useful lives," the company has decided to discontinue production of Spectra instant film.
Fujifilm just announced the new Instax Mini LiPlay (pronounced "lee-play"), a hybrid camera that aims to take instant photography to the next level with a set of never-before-seen features.
Beware: instant cameras that produce Zink photos may not be a good option for preserving memories long term.
Over the last 5 years, drones have consumed every part of my life. From using aerial systems to carry cameras as a service provider with Drone Dudes, to selling drones with Dronefly, or designing and making drones in China with Yuneec, I’ve been involved in all aspects of the drone industry.
Bulunkul is a very small and isolated town of 306 people that live deep within the High Pamirs in Central Asia. The people of the town live off of little more than yak and grain but are also some of the happiest I've ever met.
The legendary toy camera brand Holga has announced a new product called the Holga Printer. It's an Instax printer that's 100% mechanical -- there's no electronics or battery inside the device.
The Prynt Pocket is a printer attachment for your smartphone that will turn it into an instant camera. If you print photos often, Prynt just announced a new unlimited paper subscription plan to take away some of the wallet pain of instant photos.
Before ever setting foot in Colombia, I knew there was more to the country than the stories and imagery of war, violence, drug trafficking, and assorted horrors which pervade the media. So, in 2003, I headed to Colombia for the first time. Little did I know that would be the start of a project that I would carry out over eleven years and become the book No Dar Papaya.
If you're obsessed with classic Polaroid-style instant photos, Phrame is a new picture frame designed specifically for you.
Jollylook is a new vintage-style folding camera for shooting Fuji Instax Mini instant film. It's also the first camera of its kind to be made of cardboard and recycled paper.
Photographer Alessandro Michelazzi recently attended the 91st "Pitti Immagine Uomo" male fashion fair in his city, Florence, Italy. While there, he shot a creative portrait project in which he asked attendees to pose for and hold up Instax instant photos of themselves.
Welcome Leica!
It is with a smile on our faces that we welcome another player in the instant camera world!
Fujifilm just brought its Instax instant film into the world of black-and-white photography with the unveiling of its new Instax Mini Film Monochrome.
Here's a little tip for those of you who shoot with Fuji Instax film while out and about: once you're done exposing a pack of film, you can use the empty plastic pack as a container to hold your Instax photos.
Photographer Arvid Larsson recently made himself a portable instant camera that's powered by a Raspberry Pi computer camera and thermal receipt printer.
Instant photos are fun and were at one time super popular, but they aren't exactly cheap. Shooting with new Impossible Project film costs about $3 per shot these days. But what if you could shoot casual instant snapshots on a physical medium for less than a penny per shot?
That's the idea behind the PrintSnap. It's an instant camera that captures photos on standard receipt paper.
Here's an interesting fusion of analog camera technologies: Kevin over at the Hong Kong-based photo site FilMe figured out how to make his Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera shoot Fujifilm Instax instant photos.
Since 2006, Brooklyn-based artist Patrick Winfield has been creating incredible photo collages by photographing and recreating scenes using a large number of individual instant photo prints. Some of his pieces are composed by more than over one hundred instant photos! Although his work mostly featured Polaroid films early on, Winfield branched out into other types as well (e.g. The Impossible Project instant films) after Polaroid bowed out of the industry.
At The Impossible Project's booth at Photokina 2012, there was a Impossible Instant Lab camera printer/camera being demonstrated. This is the device that was announced a couple of weeks ago that lets you quickly turn your iPhone photos into Polaroid pictures (i.e. Impossible's instant film or whatever stock you have left).
Now that The Impossible Project has succeeded in reviving Polaroid-style instant films -- even giant ones -- the company is expanding its horizons and branching out to new products. Today, it announced a crazy new device that's dedicated to turning your digital iPhone photos into analog instant photo prints: the Impossible Instant Lab.
The Impossible Project has partnered up with Japanese music producer and designer Nigo …
After reading about the Wakhan Corridor in the New York Times, French photographers …
Eve Johnson of Evalicious wanted to turn some old digital photographs into Instax-style …
Talia van der Wel of New Zealand wanted a simple and beautiful way to display instant photos, and came up with the idea of an empty frame in which photos are hung on clothespins from twine. After sharing the idea with her husband, he went and created the frame out of an old wood lattice.
Teenage photographers Vanessa Hollander and Wilson Philippe embarked on …
File this under “awesome ways to show off your photos”. Lomographer zakguy had …
Needed a Polaroid picture for a project I’m working on, so I purchased a Polaroid One Step camera for …
Swedish Alex Breton spent 11 years and and $10 million developing the PrintBrush, …
Not content with simply resurrecting traditional Polaroid instant film, The Impossible Project is …
Did you know that you can turn any wall magnetic by painting it with magnetic primer? Communications company M Booth did this with one of its walls, then sent out employees onto the streets of NYC with Fujifilm Instax cameras. The result is this impressive wall displaying 800 instant photos!
Instaprint is a neat wall-mounted printer that fuses old-school Polaroid-style instant photos with social media (namely Instagr.am). Basically it's a box you rent for events that contains a modified, Internet-connected Zink printer. It uses the Instagr.am API to constantly scan for a specific location or hashtag, and when new photos are found they're automatically printed and pushed out the bottom.