Posted on 02/26/2008 3:52:27 PM PST by Perdogg
The company that pioneered instant photography is getting out of the film business to focus on digital imaging.
Polaroid says it will close its two remaining film manufacturing plants in Massachusetts. The facilities in Norwood and Waltham employed about 150 people and made large-format film for commercial use.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Sad to see it go but this is one good reason to see a factory close. The simple fact is that film is becoming a thing of the past in a hurry.
I have a Polaroid folding camera around somewhere. Leaather and chrome with a Carl Zeiss lens. Guess I waited too long to put it on ebay.
I have a Polaroid folding camera around somewhere. Leaather and chrome with a Carl Zeiss lens. Guess I waited too long to put it on ebay.
So I guess I will have to get rid of my camera!
Have to see if I can find my “Swinger”.
Yep, my brother-in-law saw it coming and closed his camera shop here a few years ago. Digital is so much easier.
It's been so long, I'm having trouble recalling- I *think* it was a 545 Polaroid back I used with my Crown Graphic-- you could get an instant B & W picture, to check composure, exposure, and so forth before taking the shot with a film holder.
In 5 years children won’t know what a film camera is.
Just like rotary phones and LP turntables, I'm getting old.
Film is rapidly going the way of the buggywhip. Still used for x-rays, I suppose, but the printing industry is pretty much all digital, and the movie industry is going that way.
My sister is a professional photographer and uses digital pretty much exclusively. However there will always be purists and a small market for very expensive film.
nope, X-rays are going digital.
Radiologists can read them at home over the internet and burn a CD for “transfer” of film. It actually works better, because you can enlarge and manipulate the contrast of the image without retaking the x-ray.
Do they have a little digital camera with built-in printer? If so then I won’t mind losing the use of my Square Shooter.
I suspect you're right- the little I have looked for such things on the web, there does seem to still be a niche for film and traditional printing.
I'll be sorry to see the old Polaroid-Land process fall by the wayside, but that's progress for you.
My great grandfather was a photographer from back in the early 1900s and my sis got all of his equipment. She occasionally uses it for historical exhibitions of imaging technology but has handed it over to a museum in our hometown along with thousands of pictures and negatives.
He took some great pictures during his years as a surveyor in Michigan’s upper peninsula. One of my favorites was of an elk hunt out west with friends in the 1920s. 12 huge elk hanging from that pole.
The first person to handle a package of Polaroid film was the consumer.
The silos for the plastic resin were buried in the ground to comply with building regulations.
During construction of the plants, the 300 ton injection molding machines were lifted by cranes and swung through windows into the shop floors which were a total of four floors in each plant.
Each floor had 48 machines running 24/7 producing 32 packages of film every 42 seconds. Which were then sealed in individual packages and then put into cartons and then cartons stacked onto pallets and shrink wrapped for shipping without a human hand touching any of the process.
There's a niche for real stone litho and hand-engraved copper plate intaglio, too. But you can't find a store that sells the stuff on every corner, like camera film. It will become an art media.
Half my college class doesn’t know what a Smurf is.
Years ago, the Downtown Development Authority stumbled across many boxes of old glass-plate negatives, and wanted some printed.
Ironically, the photographer, from the 1890's was related to me by marriage...
It was difficult compensating for the differences in old/new materials-- the glass negatives were exposed with contact printing on platinum or palladium paper, and I was enlarging ( slightly ) for silver ( Zone VI Brilliant ) paper-- but it was fascinating.
Truly, a lost world and way of life.
Gas lights and coal heat-- horses and trains. About five competing newspapers who all hated each other.
Gotta run- bedtime for old folks here...
That's a good thing.
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