POLAROID ROLL FILM - The DAWN of Instant Photography

Before the SX-70 and 600 and Spectra, before Packfilm, Polaroid invented instant photography with a format that is often overlooked: Instant Roll Film. An incredible invention in the 1940's brought to you courtesy of Edwin Land.
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[@kisielmalinowy14]

The fact that the name polaroid comes from polarising filters just blew my mind

[@IainHC1]

Made me think twice too :-)

[@stevenhoelderich9490]

I, recommend the Polaroid,camera Model 450.

[@btrdangerdan2010]

The in an instant guy would love this. A collab would be great.

[@jamesonemory3413]

You prolly dont care but does someone know a way to log back into an Instagram account?? I stupidly forgot my login password. I love any help you can give me

[@cairoyehuda4582]

@Jameson Emory instablaster :)

[@jamesonemory3413]

@Cairo Yehuda thanks for your reply. I got to the site on google and im in the hacking process now. I see it takes a while so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.

[@jamesonemory3413]

@Cairo Yehuda It did the trick and I finally got access to my account again. I'm so happy! Thanks so much you saved my ass!

[@cairoyehuda4582]

@Jameson Emory you are welcome :D

[@uncletrash8770]

I just got myself a Land Camera 80B, and I find myself coming to your channel yet again! Everytime I get a new camera, I come over to see if you talked about it, and you do! Every single time! Thanks, man.

[@jetaddict420]

man i just wanna say you really sparked my interest in analog photography a year ago

[@aaronblair9583]

The print coater is an acetic acid lacquer impregnated foam. It takes the place of a standard films stop bath, as well as gives it a protective coat..The foam is made out of plasticised lanolin.ie sheep fat was used as the base oil in the foam instead of petroleum. The last month of production for roll film was July 1992. I agree, roll film would be the easiest to re discover and manufacture.back when it was still being made I used to buy fp3000b for the sole purpose of transplanting into rolls of type 47 and 42. It worked wonderfully. The dry developer, negative and print stock seems to have help up 100%. It's the dry reagent that's the problem... My secret chemistry project has been attempting to make my own reagent. Although I have produced an image, it was nowhere near as good as the old stock you used. Also, just try making a waterproof envelop that pops along one side....jeeze It's a crapshoot...every month I go on eBay and buy two packs of roll film with a budget totalling $15. If I can't get it within that I don't buy it...my success rate is around 35%. Also, unlike packfilm. If one shot on a roll develops it's likely that every shot will. Whereas packfilm can give one beautiful exposure and all other shots are dead. Secret time- the best aging old Polaroid packfilm stock is type 679, more reliable than almost everything I've tried..all packs newer than 02 have produced an image with no sticky print syndrome. Shhhh....and it shifts to yellow instead of pink with age...which is sweeeet

[@thewetcoast]

Polaroid called the "goo" "reagent". Also, type 42 film was the first panchromatic film. Previous film types were orthochromatic (not sensitive to red). A nice demonstration of roll film!

[@sednoid]

I'm not even very interested in instant photography but your videos on the subject are just too good to miss. Very nicely made, informative and engaging!

[@GoneWithFilm]

You're spot on about the quality of the roll film cameras. I shoot a Polaroid 110 Pathfinder that I converted to Instax film and it's been a blast. The fit and finish is incredible, even better than my Graflexes.

[@the_lomographer4047]

Another great video, looking forward to next ones. There definitely were Type 30 backs for SOMETHING as I have 20+ shots of it with giant black bars on sides from 1979 in San Fransisco. Ive posted a few on Reddit, where i’ll now go and put a link for this if someone hasn’t beat me to it. Okay, you beat me to it. Any and all of these roll film cameras can be tested with double sided tape and Instax, provided you have somewhere dark and some rollers to process the film. The 95 makes surprisingly clear shots for a 72 year old mechanism. You left the J33 off the Type 30 list. The J33 and J66 used “electric eye” to gauge and set exposure, and were first Polaroids to use 2 zone focusing. Black tape on sensor lets you use it with Instax to have auto exposure, similar to the “color kits”.

[@chrismarquardt]

Thank you for putting such a really well-researched resource online. Such an awesome video and I enjoyed every second of it.

[@ArthurFellig]

This is a great video. Thanks for sharing such a deep dive into the history of Polaroid. I think it's worth noting that the the idea that Edwin Land created instant photography completely on his own, is not entirely correct. Land certainly was the primary influence in bringing instant photography to the masses, but he worked with technologies that had been developed earlier to make it happen. Most notable, in my humble opinion, is the work of Dr. Edith Weyde of Germany. Weyde, while working for the AGFA-Geveart company, developed the diffusion transfer process. She held patents on the process prior to Edwin Land, and I would argue played a bigger role in the "invention" of instant photography. Without the diffusion transfer process, instant photography is not possible. I don't mean to take away from the achievements of Edwin Land. He was a brilliant business man, and incredibly creative thinker. (Not to mention a master marketing genius. After all, where did the idea that he invented poaroid come from in the first place??) I'm sure I'm getting some of the details wrong here, but there is certainly more to the story. I just hope that some folks out there might find this information interesting. Excellent video! Clicking subscribe now!

[@AnalogResurgence]

I think that's important as well for sure! It looks like her development of silver salt diffusion transfer made a ton of this possible and did pave the way for Land's Polaroid work. Definitely Edith Weyde deserves mad respect and I wish I had dug deeper into this and highlighted that accomplishment here.

[@ArthurFellig]

@@AnalogResurgence Super interesting topic in my humble opinion. There are many other levels to the early years of the development of Polaroid. Another interesting point is the timing. Edwin Land made his first success in the selling polarized material to the US military. My sense is that because of this, he had connections in the US government. When the Germans were defeated in WWII, technologies and brainpower were taken from Germany and brought to the US. (Think Wernher Von Braun, development of NASA etc..) AGFA was one of those companies, and the diffusion process that they had developed was one of those technologies. Edith Weyde filed patents on the diffusion process in 1942 I believe. Then, shortly after the end of the war, Edwin Land filed very similar patents around 1948. Coincidence?? Perhaps I'm cynical, but I don't think that is a coincidence. My understanding of how exactly the technology got into the hands of Edwin Land is not clear, but the connections seem fairly obvious. I hope that others out there who have better information and understanding of the history may comment on the topic. I think it's super interesting.

[@amplifierheadache]

I had a conversation with Polaroid two years ago on this subject, to basically boil it down the reason why they are not currently pursuing anything other than integral film is simply because they do not have a few things. One being machinery to produce pack or roll film, most of polaroid's original machinery was sold off or scrapped and to rebuild or find and purchase any remaining parts or whole machines would not be economically sound, especially since they are having overhead just trying to improve what they do have and the costs of R&D of new cameras and chemistry to replace the unavailable formulas. The second issue is that even though they now are "Polaroid" they didn't have access to all of the original patents for the chemistry and methods of production. I suspect that this is still an issue. Even if they were to have legal access to these patents and methods they would still have a gap in the knowledge as the first instance of Polaroid sold off a lot of various patents and machinery to Fujifilm and a few other corporations back in the 1990s and early 2000s. Therefore they may trample over copyrights that they no longer have. In my conversation with them they are of course interested in the possibility of bringing one or both of these formats back, but at the time of the conversation and even today the viability of making a marginal profit for Polaroid off these formats did not out weigh the cost of obtaining all the original patents, rights and either finding and purchasing or building from scratch the tooling and machinery for these formats. Maybe one day we will see Polaroid bring back another format, but since the conversation they ran into a major issue with the Spectra line and had to shelve that operation until they find a solution to the issue. Which if the rumor mill is to be believed probably means they will probably first work on an I-type spectra replacement. This is coming from two conversations I had with them between 2017 and 2018. The spectra issue arose last year in 2019 and with the current pandemic I don't think we'll see a solution to it until probably next year at the soonest.

[@AnalogResurgence]

Definitely for Polaroid it does come down to remaining resources. The big scrap of everything began in the early 2000s but because of a lawsuit against the President at the time things were put on hold. Just in time for the Netherlands factory to be saved which became the impossible project. It’s also a big matter of remaining chemical availability/legalities regardless of what patents they have. It’s just a different world for manufacturing that stuff in comparison to 30 years ago. I would really truly be so surprised if they did anything with Spectra at all.

[@amplifierheadache]

I do hope they will, I do love Fuji's wide instax but there is some good fun and creative possibilities with the spectra system for sure. Because they have the ability to produce spectra film I just think that logically that they would choose to pursue a solution to the old cameras not liking the newer packs. Which by their admittance is not looking like it's solvable with the old cameras. It definitely hurts thinking that we may not be able to continue using the old cameras but I think losing the format entirely is worse. I'm always optimistic that the community may find a work around for the issues. But it's definitely a case by case issue with the old spectra cameras.

[@the_lomographer4047]

No reason roll or packfilm can’t be made. New55 / Famous Format managed to create all the materials needed NOW. Pretty sure Polaroid has resources that exceed theirs by an order of magnitude.

[@amplifierheadache]

@@the_lomographer4047 They definitely have the ability to acquire the required material, however as of at least 2018 when I was talking to a few of their technicians they simply couldn't justify the cost to profit margins for pursuing the formats. That and they said that they currently didn't have the space to fit the machinery at the time. It wasn't disclosed in the acquisition by Smolokowski if Polaroid PLR IP Holdings had full access to all of the patents or not. But with the other projects by other companies as well as groups in the community, they basically are working from the ground up, based on public knowledge and available information in the public domain. But for a corporation, they typically can't just look at an old schematic and slap together a new machine. New restrictions on chemicals, licenses on machinery concepts and parts. All of this and more hamper bringing a new production line online for consumer production. They never ruled out the possibility in the future to possibly bring these formats to bare, but it isn't likely we'll see it anytime soon.

[@the_lomographer4047]

amplifierheadache i agree they don’t see money in it. But they have done nothing to move QUALITY forward, just more “Krylon Kollection” cameras and film borders. All of the electronics in a 680 should cost about $1 at this point and should fit inside standard folding SX-70. Imagine THAT camera. Looks like 1974 SX-70 but has defeatable AF and flash and uses i-Type film. If a few guys in a garage could figure out 55, the engineering is already done for B&W pack film and roll film. Just needs to be repackaged. If Polaroid’s engineering staff is backed up by the new “Hello Kitty Cam” and film borders, they could license it. Or maybe Famous Format could sell it? Just have to repackage work that is already done. BTW, i ended up with 6 Spectras. I think PO is only partially to blame now, of the 6 only 2 worked well. Too much plastic in parts that should have been metal. If they ever figure out getting the film on a diet they might be able to reintroduce, but i doubt they will. Many of the cameras arent up to it anymore. Anyhow, if there is a market, someone will make it. I get frustrated but i need to remember that this is no longer a “must have” product for most of it’s prior uses. Digital has made it into a niche and if there are t enough people in the niche, it won’t happen.

[@GGoAwayy]

Sniffing the print coating squeegee looks like doing poppers. "VCR head cleaner."

[@AndersKeisHansen]

Really good history behind all the polaroid stuff, thx ! :) Great video

[@wullieg7269]

I worked there,film division making the film packs for pro med format cameras with polariod backs,it was a great tool for pro studio photography,I miss the overtime!.

[@StickPeopleAndPuff]

I cant wait for the Pack Film video! I would have loved to get into it but I got into film just in time for Polaroid to discontinue Spectra film and I'm still not ok with that....

[@MichaWha]

Very interesting video, thanks for sharing!

[@dereksauer8108]

This is an incredibly informative video. Absolutely great work. I've never been all that interested in instant film but you make it fascinating.

[@tomjanowski8584]

Thanks for another extremely interesting video. My dad had a Swinger so I remember the smell of the print coating. I have to say that even at a young age I always thought the instant black and white photos taken with the Swinger had much better image quality and more consistent image quality than the SX70 integral photos that followed.

[@Kumba830]

I always wondered why there was never a push to bring back roll film for those same reasons. It would be definitely be easiest for a small startup of all the formats. Just kinda comes down to if theres really a market for it.

[@aag24]

Thank you for an informative and well made video. I was able to buy (crazy expensive) pack film just before it was discontinued by Fujifilm. The price has only gone up and I did pack the one pack Kickstarter … but I don’t think anything can come of that - it’s just the large large format rolls of Polaroid film chopped up, isn’t it? That was disappointing. Thank you again!

[@ramarren]

The reason for integral film being resurrected first and early was likely that the film plant in The Netherlands had the machines to build the finished film packs, where the machines to build the roll film and pack film formats were long gone by the middle '00s. The roll film cameras are all very, very old now so resurrecting that film format is a very limited endeavor. Building the pack film product was a truly daunting project ... going one shot per pack even in the One Instant context was a huge endeavor.

[@filmic1]

I used a couple of rolls of expired Polaroid 35mm film in my Nikon for a fashion studio course I took. Very weird but neat stuff. Very difficult to scan as it was quite degraded but a great experiment for a fashion editorial look..This was 1995 or -96.

[@christopherrasmussen8718]

When I was a kid I got a hand me down #95. I used it for about a year till I got my first Land Camera. I still have a few pack cameras. And some very old pack film. Just got a first version SX 70 restored snd been using it.

[@akin4536]

I would love to shoot packfilm. But, I just can't afford to :/ It's really intresting and cool though. Great job on the vid!

[@robertknight4672]

The early instant cameras her somewhat crude in their operation but first version of things often are. As long as it worked.

[@marksgraybeal]

id forgotten that used. started collection early of cameras. even roll fillm i think.

[@comeradecoyote]

In the 50’s the fastest native iso film was Kodak Royal X-pan which was 1600 iso I believe but easily pushed to 3200. Very rare and very expensive film it was. Also only available in large format sheet films in the beginning. Fort press photographers, specifically to capture the queen’s coronation.

[@mbarsot]

I shoot my first photos with a Swinger. And they are stil beautiful to look at. It would be great to see you shooting swinger photos now, or at least some non-integral color (colorpack-xx) style. My impression is that - as great as the SX 70 time zero colors were - the peel apart colors were simply better.

[@himeccms893]

What with the size of the film sheet, shouldn't these instant film be equivalent to large format? Can we jack a large format sheet film into one of these camera instead of the now hard to find instant?

[@jelleburmann7194]

I believe there are modified cameras with a 4x5 back on there.

[@donaldlampert331]

Excellent ….. keep on going!

[@benbot5173]

Bought a roll of 42 that expired in 1988, managed to get usable images out of it from a model 95B!

[@uriellopez2130]

I don’t know if it counts but in the early 1900s their was a mintuegraph a portrait photograph done in one minute it came in this small round paper sleeve it was like a tin-type but a bit faster the cameras looked like a large 8x10 camera but it had a long tubular shaped lens about 6 inches long and 5 inches in diameter the quality was like a cheap petzval lens but extremely sharp when the subject was around 3 feet away I had one of these minutegraph cameras it had two trays one said pre expose and stop it was a very interesting camera to use it was on a monopod with a shoulder rest so it might of been used with a guy carrying the camera around the city the portraits where 2x3

[@AnalogResurgence]

I’ll definitely have to look into that more!

[@entity9742]

16:45 actually ive been working on a way to make some roll film but its tricky trying to align all the frames since the paper negatives are now not sold in rolls Also as a quick question thats been on my mind What exactly would happen if you used the chems in integral film for peel apart film? I got a monobath mixture for b&w peel apart film but color peel apart film reagent is another animal in itself

[@areallyrealisticguyd4333]

The type 95 is the type of high end camera I'd want from Polaroid today. Something that isn't automatic and looks vintage. Probably similar to the Mint Rf70 but cheaper and specifically for I-type film. I loved the l-1 impossible camera because it had manual features but over time polaroid took away all that and focused on automatic cameras.

[@DavidAragon13]

Am I the only one who likes the smell of print coater? Also back in 2003 I bought a whole bunch of 42, and I still have about 6 rolls left. I love to use my 95 and 100 as they were intended.

[@jmm117kgb]

great video thanks!

[@Varo486Photography]

Then there's polaroid 35mm film. I have a few polachrome rolls with the developing machine thingy. While it's not instant, it's something unique. They would sell polachrome packs which consist of a film roll and a chemical cartridge. You'd put that into the developing machine and the roll would come out fully developed, ready for cutting it. I've done one of those and it's difficult to scan, it has scanlines on it.

[@Zetaphotography]

I have a 450 Model. How can I convert it.

[@UmbertoAmante]

The irony here is this muppet pines for the days of film and is only heard on an amazing DIGITAL platform. Edwin Land would take one look at what we do now and say "Ok, forget my stuff...."

[@AnalogResurgence]

I take it has only the highest compliment to be called a Muppet 😘

[@petepictures]

Yea cool I have the one called 120 , for display and am shooting lots of pack film, also now and then some integral and Instax .

[@ppknr336]

Seriously, it is literally the 'originals' of polaroid. Someone, or group must revival roll film. I think, it is sort of the quest of edwin land.

[@FreezerKing]

"Meet the Swinger/the Polaroid Swinger" that jingle is really fuckin' catchy

[@marksgraybeal]

even bot a pac of film to maybe use in speedgraflex i wanted to get back into, as was tot in college photography class. just sit for now but much to use for hobby when able...

[@elvisfan961]

Ah yes. The sweet smell of Polaroid print coater. Not gonna lie, whenever I find these in a Polaroid camera case I take a whiff for fun ha ha.

[@butlaoctu4464]

You May like polaroid cameras, but the Gomz Moment Looks the Best.

[@AwesomeAngelMC]

Make vid on Pack Film please !

[@BadKarma714]

Good video

[@HunterPecoraLax]

I have 40+ boxes of roll film cold stored. Mostly 1975-1988

[@nelsonm.5044]

I now understand why over the year I've seen so many photos from the 1950 that had a curve to it. I always thought it was poor storing conditions that gave those the banana curve, no, they were Polaroid

[@ripemangosmdm7997]

Too cool. Too special.

[@srenhaandbk7904]

I was wondering, I have a box of glass-pane slides I found. Would you be interested in giving it a look?

[@andrewnope7879]

I have a model 150 that I have converted to take 120mm roll film.

[@max-lee]

So that’s what pack film is.

[@Mc007Queen]

I don't know about you but I was just stick with the 35 mm photograph

[@KrzystynaCaldarone]

I love my modified pathfinder. I shoot all the time. Why bring back roll film where cameras can be modified.

[@andrewmiller6754]

I personally don't like instax mini mainly becouse 50-70% of the shots I get eather go tok dark or pich black and I have never had that issue with Polaroid or instax wide film (touch wood)

[@Adrian-wd4rn]

I mean, peel apart and roll film is just too much of a hassle. It cost $20 for 8 shots (used to be 10) of easier to product integral film. How many teenagers (polaroid and instax's target and largest audience) do you think would be able to afford $40-50 8 shot packs? Hell, they may make it $40 for 4 shots instead of 8. Outside of a very very niche group of people, who the amount you can comfortably fit in a grocery store, no one is going to go through the hassle and cost, which is why no one is really producing it.

[@technol-bismol3778]

$960.92 in today’s US dollars not bad all things considered

[@spencerfalzy]

You haven’t been watching my videos :’(

[@creepyloner1979]

print coater is basically just fixer.

[@DaarkCloud]

I'm pretty disappointed with Polaroids current film. Instax takes a better photo.

[@UnderPresser]

That thing where you read that entire paragraph that was simultaneously on the screen? Please don't ever do that again.

[@AnalogResurgence]

Hey you got it boss