Its prints are half the size, but it is overall more reliable for getting accurate exposure than my SX70, with a built-in always-on flash. When you consider the cost of a pack of film (above) equates to around $3 / £2 / AU$4.50 per print, you hardly want to fire off three of the same picture with incremental shifts in brightness values just in case.įilm needs to be stored in cool temperatures or else it spoils, and I fully recommend buying film directly from Polaroid (opens in new tab) – who stores it correctly – in favor of e-commerce companies more likely to store the film in hot warehouses.īy coincidence, I had another instant camera for review at the same time as dusting off my SX70, the Fujifilm Instax Mini 12. For example, that 10-15 minute wait for a fully developed print might only reveal an under or overexposed print, by which point the light could have totally changed making tweaks to the exposure control to get the shot right a second time around, unreliable once more. It’s a whole other way of working compared to today’s high-performance mirrorless cameras, and often impractical especially when working in natural light. You don’t get a digital display showing you what to expect, plus you have to wait a whopping 10-15 minutes for the instant photo to develop fully before your eyes. Lining up that central manual focus circle is slow, precise and satisfying. Forget today’s silent electronic shutters, give me that clunk and whirr any day! I don’t think it’s possible to tire of its elegant looks, finessed controls and brutish mechanics. Since I last properly used my SX70, I’ve worked in camera journalism and been spoiled by some of the best cameras available to photographers. I recently acquired a few packs of SX70 film – each pack contains 8 sheets and costs $26 / £19 / AU$35 (approx), though you get a small discount when buying multiple packs – reacquainted myself with my SX70 camera, and did what you really should do with a camera stopped admiring it and put it to use. The Impossible Project was renamed Polaroid Originals, then in 2020 it reverted back to the original Polaroid name which is where we are now in 2023.Īfter years of the film being made properly again, and a reliable source of it via the Polaroid shop, surely it must have been improved and more reliable? Since then, after several changes of hand, Polaroid landed secure investment in 2017, and its intellectual property and brand was acquired. I would tinker with the camera settings and use a whole pack of film just to get one half-usable picture.īut that was almost 15 years ago. Sadly it proved wildly unpredictable and, sorry to say it, essentially a waste of money. When working at Amateur Photographer magazine in 2010, I got the opportunity to try out a few packs of the new Monochrome film in its infancy. Many years later in 2008, a start up from the Netherlands called the Impossible Project bought Polaroid’s production machinery for a mere $3.1 million, and started making its own film for the camera. Those halcyon days were few, and my SX70 took up residency on a bookshelf along with a growing collection of photography books. Shelf timeĪfter Polaroid declared bankruptcy, the price of SX70 film packs shot through the roof and were all snapped up within months. And as for instant photography, pretty good quality prints.īut if you know anything about Polaroid, you'll know that something disastrous happened that same year I bought an SX70. Such a slow, measured and satisfying experience. And yeah it got admiring looks, too.Ī brutish clunk and whirr, and out pops a perfectly sized square format print, revealing its dreamy vintage style over the course of 10-15 minutes. It was such a great camera to use a rangefinder-style display where you line up the central circle with your subject for accurate manual focusing, plus auto exposure. I got a bunch of lovely instant photos with it that first year of university, mainly of my friends, whenever I could afford to buy film packs. In those early days, my SX70 didn’t disappoint. Cue agonizing wait for it to arrive in the post. ![]() An optional flash was included, too, albeit mine came with a less-fancy camera case.īuy now. True to his word, I found one for the same price, but with a brown leather finish that I preferred anyway. Yet as I first laid eyes on his SX70 – the first single lens reflex instant camera that, being launched in 1972, recently had its 50th anniversary – I was mesmerized. By contrast, I was new to photography, starting to get a feel for the array of medium format and large format cameras at our disposal in the university's photo studio stock room. He was a top-of-the-class student, and a lover of cameras (and cats) to boot. ![]() A fellow photography student, from Taiwan, had one of his own, in black.
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