Last week I decided to make a purchase I’d been considering for a number of months – A Polaroid camera.
Whilst I’ve spent many years with film and digital, an instant camera was something I wanted to try but could never really justify the purchase.
After seeing an offer of £119 for the Polaroid Now Generation 2 with two films, I thought it was time to take a look.
I remember seeing many Polaroids in the wild during the 80’s, those were the days long before megapixels and post processing, a photograph you could take and develop instantly was obviously a hit with many people.
So I took my new Polaroid to a pub in Sunderland and started snapping. Having read up a little before going out I was surprised to read that after you’d taken the photograph you were supposed to place it face down on a flat surface for it to develop correctly. What happened to the days of fanning the photograph in the air for a couple of seconds before seeing your efforts? Was the fanning of Polaroids never supposed to be a thing or have they changed the chemicals? After taking my first image I also recall in the 80’s that the pictures were ready in the few minutes? Well we may live in a world of processing power undreamt of in the 80’s, but as far as instant photographs go, I was waiting much longer than a few minutes for the process to compete to a stage where the image resembled that which I’d taken.
The first photograph I must admit disappointed me, although the pub was not well lit, there were light sources, the flash was on and I was about a meter away from the subject (my wife). Underexposure was the experience here, of the subject, background and foreground. The image in my view was passable but had it been to celebrate a special event, I would have been very disappointed. And that was the theme for the rest of the evening with the photographs. I took some closer photographs of people which were ok, however the rest of the image was completely underexposed giving an effect similar to that in the Bohemian Rhapsody music video….except the faces being slightly unexposed.
I was not put off by the experience and decided to give the camera a chance outside in sunlight and these images exposed mostly ok. The light meter (or whatever tech is used to make exposure decisions in the camera) seems to me to be hit and miss with a slightly over exposed sky and underexposed landscape or a slightly underexposed landscape and a completely blown out sky.
The feature that I purchased the camera for was yet to be tested (double exposure) but it was at this point when I was further examining the photographs I’d taken, I noticed an issue, a small patch overexposed on the bottom left and right of the picture. This issue had appeared in all of my images to varying degrees, however with the underwhelming photographs I not previously spent much time examining them in detail so had missed it. I believe that its a light leak in the camera and I draw this conclusion as it appears in both the films I used with the camera. Tomorrow the camera will be returned for a replacement and it would be nice if by way of an apology I am given 2 new films as there is not much I can do with these images.
My final thoughts so far – from my experience I cannot recommend this as a fun camera you take for a night out. Unless you have a lot of light as well as using the flash you are not guaranteed of an image anyone would want to keep. As well as that you have to consider whilst you are experimenting with what the camera can do, it works out about £2.00 a picture. A pretty expensive experiment. Did Polaroid cost the equivalent of £2.00 a picture in the 80’s?
I am hoping that when the replacement Polaroid is received I have a an entirely better experience and I’ll write a followup article.
Tim Wilson 
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