Instant Cine Film? Polavision and Polaroid's fall

Рет қаралды 22,226

3 ай бұрын

Part one - Polaroid's rise: • How photos became Instant
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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Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_mm_film
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_8...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polavision
www.nytimes.com/1982/07/28/bu...
web.archive.org/web/200505100...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroi...
www.nytimes.com/1985/04/23/sc...
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposa...
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camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/P...
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www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
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Пікірлер: 104

@LittleCar 3 ай бұрын

Part 1 - Polaroid's rise: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q3yWd2Sabr6Vp6s

@michaelharrison1093 3 ай бұрын

In the late 70s to early 80s as a teenager I was into all the latest technology. I got involved in the running of a few outdoor concerts and other events where a few of us would go through the crowds with SLR 35mm film cameras loaded with the Polaroid color film taking photos of the people at the event and then we would rush through the developing process. With a reduced time in the fixer and a fraction of the recommend wash time we could develop the film and get it into a film projector within about 20 minutes. Back then this seemed like some kind of magic being able to show on screen pictures of the people in the crowds only minutes after the photos were taken.

@joes9954 2 ай бұрын

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.

@gwheregwhizz 3 ай бұрын

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.

@zeke7237 2 ай бұрын

I worked in the mid 70s for two local processors in my town. People were definitely not worried about what they sent in, and the really interesting prints tended to get double printed with the duplicate posted on a bulletin board 😬

@dyscotopia 2 ай бұрын

I had a polaroid in the early 2000s just before digital started to be affordable and there was something about the terrible quality that lent a seedy allure to intimate images taken with said camera

@GothGuy885 2 ай бұрын

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.

@adambomb2916 2 ай бұрын

I have an empty 600 pack from 1982 that i use for testing my cameras that still has a charge, its fuckin insane, even after running it through multiple cameras and all the exposures gone it still holds a charge

@GothGuy885 2 ай бұрын

@@adambomb2916 Damn wish they made all batteries like that now. specially the rechargable ones. I have a blue tooth speaker and it annoys me when I am in the middle of a shower, and I hear the music stop and this little voice saying, "Low battery ..... recharge "......"Low battery ..... recharge " over and over, and I have to towel off before, I can shut it off before it drives me crazy. 😤

@nicholassheffo5723 3 ай бұрын

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 KZbin. Thanks for another excellent video!

@Ragnar8504 2 ай бұрын

Yup, the standard range of S8 only included two film speeds - 40 and the very grainy and therefore rarely used 160 ASA. And even that's only true if you were shooting in tungsten light. For daylight shooting you needed a conversion filter (built into the camera) that further reduced the speed to 25 or 100 ASA. There might have been others (and certainly are nowadays) but only a tiny selection of expensive cameras could actually read cartridge notches other than 40 and 160 and therefore expose the film correctly. I was born when Super 8 was pretty much dead but my dad wasn't keen on dragging around a heavy mid-80s camcorder, let alone a camera and portable VHS recorder like my uncle did, so my earlier childhood is still documented on S8. He got a Hi-8 camcorder in 1991 but being a bit of a nostalgia nerd, he bought me my own Eumig Mini 3 camera on a flea market in 1994 and I shot about one roll of K40 per year until 2003, using either the Eumig or the delightfully bonkers Agfa Family. Being well and truly obsolete, S8 cameras had the advantage of being much, much cheaper to replace than camcorders in case something happened to them on a school trip. They were also considerably lighter than a mid- or late-90s 8 mm or VHS-C camcorder. The very last roll I shot was found film, not exposed by the original owner, and I got is developed in the nick of time before Dwayne's closed down Super 8 developing for good.

@leiphf 3 ай бұрын

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

@edwardalexander9486 2 ай бұрын

Powers of Ten is another Eames classic.

@TheWaterboarders 2 ай бұрын

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.

@JenniferinIllinois 3 ай бұрын

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

@williamevans9426 3 ай бұрын

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.

@Greatdome99 2 ай бұрын

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.

@Pioneers_Of_Cinema 2 ай бұрын

That was the difference between 'double-8' and Standard 8?

@Ragnar8504 2 ай бұрын

@@Pioneers_Of_Cinema Yes. After processing they were exactly the same.

@joes9954 2 ай бұрын

Once Super 8 came out, life was a lot easier than having to flip the film and risk exposing some or all of it.

@Pioneers_Of_Cinema 2 ай бұрын

@@joes9954 I started with Super 8 - loved the cassettes - they had a unique smell too.

@Ragnar8504 2 ай бұрын

@@joes9954 Yup, worst case the film could have unravelled from the spool and the contents would have been lost completely. Even with careful handling you could get some light bleeding through. With S8 you could pull the half-exposed cartridge out of the camera in bright daylight and only expose four frames or so (at 18 FPS). From a usability perspective S8 was a massive leap forward. The only slight downside was that the pressure plate was moved from the camera into the cartridge, which could affect focus ever so slightly. Considering how much bigger the frames of S8 are, I suspect that would mostly outweigh any advantages of a perfect pressure plate. Of course then there was DS8, 7.5 m of 16 mm wide film with S8 perforation on a spool, which combined the technical advantages of both formats, with the somewhat more cumbersome handling of double 8.

@eriksnel6461 2 ай бұрын

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.

@Pioneers_Of_Cinema 2 ай бұрын

Great quality projectors - I've still got a working Eumig 8mm/super 8mm projector.

@InfectiousGroovePodcast 2 ай бұрын

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.

@CarloBecchi 3 ай бұрын

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

@SsKaySs 3 ай бұрын

Jesse Pinkman

@amaccama3267 2 ай бұрын

I thought so too.

@christopherjesusmigueltare4470 2 ай бұрын

Yo Mista White!

@thomasa.243 3 ай бұрын

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)

@musiqtee 2 ай бұрын

A corporate economist would say “they misinterpreted the market…” A leftist would say “they externalised available knowledge…” Both would focus on the company and trade mark - and forget that mistakes are human. Always.

@christianelzey9703 3 ай бұрын

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

@Ragnar8504 2 ай бұрын

I vaguely seem to remember my cousin's daughter (born in 1991) had one. My dad commented her parents seemed to have too much money when he saw it.

@absinthedude 2 ай бұрын

The Polavision film was similar ISO to the most popular Kodachrome and Agfa Moviechrome super 8 films, so no problem there....but the low contrast end result meant that the film couldn't be removed from the cassette and projected using a super 8 projector. It always relied on the specialised viewer, which managed to be cumbersome while having a small screen. By 1977 super 8 camera sales were slowing, and they'd collapse circa 1970/80....not because video was yet viable for home movies but I think because video was obviously coming. Additionally, those willing to buy cine equipment probably already had super 8, and were not likely to buy something incompatible unless it offered major advances. While the 80s and 90s camcorders couldn't match super 8 in terms of picture quality, they all offered sound recording and at least 30 minutes run time....and was was a novelty at that time, being able to watch yourself on television! Polavision offered none of that and the "instant" developing wasn't much use because you still had to get the film home. Process-paid cine film usually arrived back in under a week, even in the late 80s I was getting an average turnaround of five days from both Kodak and Agfa. It wasn't exactly a huge inconvenience. The reason Polaroid instant photos were and remain popular is because you can instantly share them with your family and friends while you're with them. I doubt many people lugged a Polavision viewer to Little Johnny's birthday party...

@Ragnar8504 2 ай бұрын

Turnaround times got much higher by the mid-90s though, I seem to remember three to six weeks from when I started filming in 1994 all the way to the end of Kodak processing in Lausanne. Not that that had any influence on Polavision, which was dead and buried by the then.

@absinthedude 2 ай бұрын

@@Ragnar8504 It definitely got slower once you had to use Lausanne, and later Dwyane's in Kansas. But at the time Polavision was launched, the turnaround was just a few days. There were even labs that could rush process your film in 24 hours. In 2022 I shot a roll of B&W 8mm film a gig, processed it myself in my bathroom and had the film on social media less than 4 hours after the gig finisned!

@Rouxenator 2 ай бұрын

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.

@danpreston564 3 ай бұрын

Edwin Land. Thats why I had a Polaroid Land Camera. It all makes sense.

@davidpoole5595 2 ай бұрын

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

@ntsecrets 3 ай бұрын

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

@deancosens5710 2 ай бұрын

All I have to say is that 'A Fistful of Bollocks' sounds great. I'm totally here for 'For A Few Bollocks More' too

@LittleCar 2 ай бұрын

We never made the follow up. It was good watching it again - reminded me of good times with old friends.

@Pioneers_Of_Cinema 2 ай бұрын

@@LittleCar You should play it on your channel.

@AquaValet2009 2 ай бұрын

I bought a Polaroid tv with integral dvd player a couple of years ago. Bit non-Polaroid!

@AtheistOrphan 3 ай бұрын

I still have some Polachrome 35mm B/W slides. They’re much thinner and more fragile than normal slide film, with an odd silvery sheen to them.

@jochenstacker7448 2 ай бұрын

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

@delusionnnnn Ай бұрын

Oh cool, I never heard of Polaroid floppies in the 8-bit era. I wouldn't mind a box of the ones that came with almost Pantone-like colour sleeves - the books looks more like polaroid instant film than the beige box, too.

@AtheistOrphan 3 ай бұрын

There was also British prototype system similar to Polavision called ‘McNallyvision’ (Yes, really).

@jeffbrinkerhoff5121 2 ай бұрын

Among my most prized possesions are a couple old Polaroid prints...

@videoplusdvd 2 ай бұрын

Looks like a very young Hugh Laurie in that ad…

@LittleCar 2 ай бұрын

It was.

@voltare2amstereo 3 ай бұрын

Imagine The home movies these made.....

@Capturing-Memories 2 ай бұрын

I just watched a thriller named "Polaroid" they featured that instant photo paper camera that folds flat in 0:40.

@johnp139 2 ай бұрын

Looking back 50 years, the Polaroid pictures didn’t fade, unlike printed photos.

@Pioneers_Of_Cinema 2 ай бұрын

The quality was pretty bad though - sort of came pre-faded and pre-blurred.

@iunderw2 3 ай бұрын

scarborough castle in the polaroid pic?

@ApolloVIIIYouAreGoForTLI 2 ай бұрын

4:28 That’s one terrifying baby right there…

@nostalgiccameralife 2 ай бұрын

5:37 is that a Suzuki LJ20?

@rx6180 2 ай бұрын

I’ve got a Polaroid sound bar plugged into my LG TV. Bought at a branch of ASDA in 2015 I think. In the 1970s I used to have a black and white Super Swinger (advertised by James Garner on TV I reckon) which was a Christmas gift, then I got my hands on a similar sized colour Polaroid camera with an electronic exposure and flash cube socket, and this was won by my stepfather in a company productivity drive and given to me. I had the huge shoulder hung carry cases for both cameras, that took up entire shelves in my wardrobe! I’d wanted Polaroid cameras because at a young age I’d not been able for some reason to get my first film camera spools to the chemist, or maybe it was a pocket money issue. Instant film seemed to be the answer. Both my colour and black and white Polaroid cameras were donated to a church jumble sale in the early 1980s to make space in the cupboards! Later in the 90s I persuaded my boss to get one of the folding Polaroid instants with company petty cash, as we sometimes (in an engineering workshop) needed to fax an image of a broken machine part to a supplier to identify what was needed. This camera was eventually rendered obsolete by an early Kodak digital camera whose images were downloaded onto desktop computers entirely by office staff and never seen by me. This was a strange looking thing like half a house brick, with a tiny lens in one corner, it didn’t go ‘click’, and it didn’t count images but just told you how much memory remained in % in a monochrome LCD display. I didn’t like it much and thought if that was what digital cameras were going to be like, I didn’t want one!

@Sashazur 2 ай бұрын

Polaroid consumer electronics from the last few decades only have the name in common with the original company.

@jeffbrinkerhoff5121 2 ай бұрын

The first digital still camera I bought was a Polaroid.

@leewm.gaudry3770 2 ай бұрын

Was tat a young Danny Devito in the commercial? One also had Hugh Laurie.

@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330 3 ай бұрын

Lady Gaga had product promotion for Polaroid in the video for Telephone. Other product placements included Beats Audio (remember them), Plenty of Fish (as if), Virgin Mobile (yeah, telephone), Wonder Bread (don't) and her sister (yeah). See if you can spot more product placements and both Polaroid things: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e4elpKymfd95abcsi=by5tRmZdHjJx61ll&t=343

@ahmedshaharyarejaz9886 16 күн бұрын

Its incredible how far technology advanced without the common digital technology we have now.

@medes5597 3 ай бұрын

The early days of the impossible project film were dreadful. The recipe for the instant film had been lost. There was a vague idea, but no one knew the specifics. So the early film they produced didn't work very well. To say the least. Impossible tried to market this as a creative effect "like OK you can't see what you photographed, but isn't it cool the way it looks weird and rainbow-y?" The modern pack film is getting better all the time. There's also MiNT cameras, who make more robust professional cameras for photographers who want to add a novelty to say wedding shoots and things.

@eriksnel6461 2 ай бұрын

It also had a lot to do with the fact that certain chemicals from the old films aren’t allowed anymore in europe so they had to make a new recipe

@barron204 2 ай бұрын

I remember that we had two brown cameras when I was a child. But I also remember the Spice Girls camera back in C1997.

@ntsecrets 3 ай бұрын

The I-zone cameras were popular in Japan under the name xiao I believe. I have one somewhere.

@jamesengland7461 3 ай бұрын

It sounds to me, from this video, that the company was capable of anything, had lots of ideas and the technical prowess to make them work, but no vision or self- awareness.

@zaneseibert 3 ай бұрын

They kind of remind me of Atari. Couldn't roll with the times, shifted their product upmarket and failed, then became a company who probably made more money on nostalgic shirt licenses then the product they were supposed to be known for.

@paulstubbs7678 2 ай бұрын

That little cube camera, so close .... as in 'GoPro' so close but missed it.

@Pioneers_Of_Cinema 2 ай бұрын

I thought of the future go-pro to compare to the cube.

@thomasfrancis5747 2 ай бұрын

Fascinating and thorough as ever. Plenty of Polaroid sunglasses still on sale. Maybe they should have learnt the lesson of VHS and licensed their technology more to other manufacturers.

@Greatdome99 2 ай бұрын

'Polarizing' sunglasses, made by anyone. Polaroid invented polarizing lenses, but did not sell sunglasses.

@Gent82 3 ай бұрын

About ten years ago I bought a digital set-top box bearing Polaroid branding. The device was fine but the inauthentic brand fooled no one.

@95blahblahhaha 2 ай бұрын

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

@quantumleap359 2 ай бұрын

I saw a Polavision demonstration at a local department store in 1977. As a super 8 filmmaker, I was underwhelmed. Very dark, low contrast and very grainy and blurry. I did some research and found that unlike standard motion picture film that was projected through the film base and then through the emulsion, Polacolor projected the film first through the emulsion then through the base. This is the very reason the Polavision's viewer images were of such low quality. I cannot fathom why such a stupid concept would ever make it to production. A sad ending to a brilliant inventor and his company.

@darrenwilson8042 3 ай бұрын

This stacks up with the mini disc music format just as the internet was launched - possibly a decent idea but tech was moving fast. I bought a TV manufactured by Polaroid about 3 years ago. Rubbish - though it did just outlast the guarantee so it did the job for Polaroid I suppose

@kevinh96 2 ай бұрын

To be fair to Sony Minidisc was quite successful in Japan and moderately successful in Europe, the format lasted pretty much almost 20-25 years in those markets.

@Pioneers_Of_Cinema 2 ай бұрын

@@kevinh96 It was a follow up to the walkman. Quite good sound quality too.

@verttikoo2052 3 ай бұрын

What I don’t understand is why didn’t they specialize in to optics 🙄

@Pioneers_Of_Cinema 2 ай бұрын

Maybe because their optics were bad?

@paucc 3 ай бұрын

Polaroid has now what NFTs would love to have.

@Iowa599 3 ай бұрын

Maybe they should have released a camera that popped an sd card out of the front after every click.

@the5th2000 2 ай бұрын

Is that Jessie from Breaking Bad in one of those ads?

@jrsc01. 2 ай бұрын

Yes that was Aaron Paul, he was in quite a few commercials for different brands around the turn of the millennium 😊

@stevew8513 2 ай бұрын

Was it the 2001 bankruptcy or the 2008 bankruptcy where the board voted themselves something like 13 million dollars in bonuses, then declared bankruptcy the next day? With business acumen like that, I can't imagine why the company went under... and of course, since they did a bang-up job getting their company to the brink of collapse, they should financially reward themselves...

@LittleCar 2 ай бұрын

2001.