Polaroid Originals

Probably one of the last to be jumping on this band waggon but now is as good a time as any to talk about the new Polaroid Originals and why i picked up a couple boxes of the 600 colour (correct spelling) film to test, this will be more a test to hopefully restore my faith in Polaroid films in general as i gave up with impossible after shooting just one box of the 600 black and white films. This is not a review of the films (yet) as i haven't shot the packs and so will be doing that once i've got through at least one of the boxes. This will mainly cover my gripes with Impossible.

So right off the bat, I've been shooting the instax films for probably 3 years now and have been perfectly happy with that, in fact i would actively avoid buying old Polaroid cameras at boot fairs and charity shops because i knew that the early impossible films weren't up to scratch. The exception would have been if id found a land camera to shoot the FP-100C, but of course those dreams were dashed as the land cameras became increasingly popular and Fuji decided to kill peel apart film. It was around the time that the Impossible 2.0 films were released and they definitely had improved, but i didn't want to pick up one of the older cameras like the early OneSteps to have it break on me instantly, or spit out a whole pack of film the second i loaded it so i waited.

And then i found the whale:

Not the prettiest polaroid camera ever made my a long stretch, but, it is one of the most recent models and so i felt a little more reassured that the camera would be working without having to test it with a £19.99 cartridge. Luckily, once i got it into my car i opened it up and found that the pack in there actually had power and so that confirmed that it worked as everything began to whir and click, all good signs. It is a very basic camera to say the least, but the fun of polaroid is to just get instant images, no complicated technicals involved. You can either choose between 1.2m- infinity or 0.6-1.2m, plus lighten or darken, very simply, i can appreciate that.

So i went out and bought a pack of the Impossible black and white films, full discloser, because i work in a camera shop that still stocks film thankfully, i got this pack for £12 i believe because it had been sat on the shelf for an extended time, plus I'm still not fully convinced that £19.99 is a good price for 8 images when i can get 20 instax wide images for the same price.

As i'm on the topic of price, i have to say that the reduced cost of the i-Type films is a step in the right direction and i am still seriously considering picking up the OneStep 2 once I've had a look at one in the flesh.

That being said, i'm incredibly excited to give these new films a test as pretty much all I've been seeing are good reviews! So fingers crossed and will write a full review once I've shot some of the new stuff.

If you have no idea what this post was about, thanks you for reading this far and check out Polaroid Originals them selves here.