Instant Cine Film? Polavision and Polaroid's fall

Polaroid tried to create a crazy instant cine film format. But let’s put that into some context. By the 1970s Polaroid were riding high, printing money with their line of easy-to-use cameras that produced instant pictures. In 1979 they did around £1.1B ($1.4B USD, €1.3B, $2.1B AUD) of business around the world. The new plastic Polaroid cameras of the late 1970s and early 1980s provided an inexpensive way of getting into simple instant photography. Inexpensive cameras made sense for Polaroid as the money was in buying instant film over, and over, and over again. Polaroid was sitting on a pile of cash from the 1960s and so started looking for other markets to disrupt.

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[TheWaterboarders]

Polaroid's cameras were actually called 'Land Cameras' after Professor Land. I used to service a lot off them, mostly cleaning the processing gunk off the rollers that squished it over the film.

[joes]

My grandfather bought into Polavision big time and we easily have about 2 dozen cartridges packed away. We had the camera, player and twi-light accessory. The last time I fired up the player, I aimed a camera at the screen to archive the films and made a video of them for grandma. (Polaroid had a service that you could send the cartridges to them and they would extract the film and put it on a reel for you for a few bucks each. Wasn’t worth the hassle. ) To call the system problematic is an understatement. If you did not shoot in just the right environment, the images would be thin and faint. There are a lot of films with tags on them indicating they went back to Polaroid for one issue or another and some carts had extended sections of blank film. The player was a tank and it still mostly worked. I had it until my move last year and was one of the things that sadly did not make it. At one point in the late 80’s I called Polaroid and they still had Polavision film for sale. I can’t remember what they wanted for it, but I briefly considered buying some before sanity returned. I would not mind finding a replacement player and try retransferring the old film but it will be a miracle to find one these days. In the preVHS days there was a fun aspect of all of us fighting over who would pop the cart into the player for development and we would all wait excitedly for the process to complete before it would start to play the first time. If Polaroid had launched this 10 or maybe even five years earlier, they might have done better, but it definitely needed a little more work before launch but the bones of the concept was sound but it was essentially obsolete the day they brought it out.

[GothGuy]

I remember when I was a teen back in the 1970's, discovering that even after all the exposures had been used, the battery in a Polaroid film pack still held about 6 volts . I was, and still am, an electronics hobbyist, and the battery's came in useful for powering small projects.

[gwheregwhizz]

Let's be honest, the primary purpose of Polaroid products was the filming of 'certain activities by consenting adults' one would not want the developer at Boots to see.

[leiphf]

The SX70 video you cut in in the beginning is my absolute favorite video ever made. It’s so very beautiful and I was very happy to see it again

[InfectiousGroovePodcast]

We had a couple of "rich cousins" who seemed to have everything. They were the first to have every piece I tech I can remember. I kid you not, I thought I was just making up that they had this until I saw this video. I just had a sort of "IT DID EXIST!" moment.

[eriksnel]

Polaroid was also co responsible for another huge disaster because of the fact they did not produce the polavision hardware. That was made by Eumig in Austria. They were the biggest maker of film equipment for home movies. The deal with polaroid left them with a complete new unusable factory and because they also didn’t pick up on video on time they suffered greatly. Another factor was that the 8mm film market collapsed with 50% in 1978 and another 50% in 1979. This was the reason eumig went bust in the early 80’s and they were once austria’s biggest employer.

[nicholassheffo]

The color ISO/ASA light sensitivity of Polavision color film was the same as Kodakchrome 40, actually, but that delivered much better color and image quality, plus those prints never fade and only have limited shrinkage. They could also be projected, which Polavision Super 8 sized film could not, because it was too thick and would not work. Land wanted to add a magnetic stripe for sound and even offer Dolby noise reduction, something not on any Super 8, Regular 8mm or Fuji's Single 8 movie film. I tried shooting some of the sealed film, but it was all bad and analog resurgence was lucky it got a refrigerated version to get any results. Eumig went bankrupt making Polavision movie cameras and you hardly ever see clips of Polavision film on line, like YouTube. Thanks for another excellent video!

[JenniferinIllinois]

It's a shame we can't get instant pictures or movies nowadays. 😉

[ntsecrets]

I worked there for 7 years starting in the late 90s, it was a great place to work.

[CarloBecchi]

Is Aaron Paul in the Polaroid commercial at 12:04!

[williamevans]

I has a Polavision kit for Christmas one year in my early 'teens. Sadly, the images were quite grainy even when filmed using the supplied, almost blindingly bright, on-camera lights (as shown in the 'outro' here). I was also upset to find, when attempting to review images of several deceased family members a few years later, that the films had deteriorated in their cassettes to the point that hardly any of the footage survived. A good idea poorly executed, as well as being terribly mis-timed in the face of first-generation home video cameras.

[christianelzey]

I had an I-Zone as a kid! That thing was awesome, the tiny photos could be peeled off the film and became stickers.

[Rouxenator]

Cube is not a bad camera, I have a few videos on my channel shot with a Cube stuck on my bicycle helmet. The battery life is only 1 hour, and you have to apply stabilization to the output (I use FFMpeg) but the camera is tough and rain/waterproof. Been through the washer and dryer once and still works.

[blahblahhaha]

Hey I love my Polaroid bluetooth speaker though....

[peterwilliamson]

I have a Polaroid camera that you missed It is the Z2300 which uses the Zink paper, so called because it contains zero ink .After taking a photo the camera prints out electronically a 2x3 inch image dry to the touch.The quality is very good with sharp detail and very good colour.

[davidpoole]

Have the camera and player in my attic....converted all the tapes to dvd....

[jochenstacker]

2:33, thanks, my screen is now drenched in coffee. 🤣🤣🤣

[Greatdome]

Most 8mm film cameras took 16mm film, not 8mm. When you came to the end of the roll, you had to switch ends to expose the other half. In processing, the film was split down the middle to produce 8mm reels.
7:03: Polaroid invented polarizing filters, used not just for sunglasses but for photographic and scientific research.

[thomasa.]

Polaroid is (and was all the time) a big brand name, yet they still managed to complete go away, almost at least… Same thing happened to other big brands like Kodak, Nokia and Commodore. That shows me one thing: No company is too big too fail, no matter how important you are now. What is however interesting with Polaroid is that the problem was also that the new owner after 2005 was involved in a Ponzi scheme 😅 (edit: typo in year)