BY ALEX CANTATORE
Staff reporter

On Feb. 8, 2008, an era came to an end.

I know, I know, your memory banks are racing, trying to think back to February. But, to be honest, you probably didn’t hear about this.

It was a small piece of news that slipped away, the death knell of a product that had long since been relevant. Why would anybody care about a thing like that?

But on Feb. 8, 2008, Polaroid announced that it would be discontinuing the production of the instant film that once made the company famous.

Polaroid announced it would no longer produce Polaroids.

Now, it may seem odd for me, a 23-year old, to mourn the passing of such a technology, a fad that reached its high point before I was even born, but I’ve always harbored a place in my heart for the humble Polaroid.

I think my love affair with the camera began in earnest sometime around when André 3000 and Big Boi, perhaps better known as Outkast to you casual observers, handed down that blessed instruction to “Shake it like a Polaroid picture,” in their 2003 hip-hop masterpiece, “Hey Ya.”

I hadn’t thought about Polaroids for years until that point. With the advent of digital photography, why would anyone want an instant camera?

The best part of the Polaroid, I always thought when I was growing up, was that you didn’t have to wait to see the results. A click, whirr, and a few shakes later, and you could see exactly what the photograph looked like.

Traditional film cameras were so bothersome by comparison. You’d snap a picture and it’d be weeks before you had the roll finished, took it down to the drug store, and remembered to go pick up your prints. By that time, it was far too late to do anything about a mis-framed snapshot.

But then digital cameras changed the game. You’d just point, shoot, and instantly see the perfectly clear picture on the LCD screen.

Why would anyone care about a Polaroid with digital cameras around? The Polaroid offerings were big, bulky, and produced oddly shaped photos that you actually had to carry around after snapping. They were simply inconvenient by comparison.

But, suddenly, when I heard André 3000’s incessant pleas, I found myself recalling the halcyon days of my youth and my father’s old Polaroid camera. How I loved the click, whirr, shake and watching an image materialize before your eyes from nothing.

It was almost like magic.

So, with a shiny new Polaroid camera in hand, I began photographing various events in my life. And, inevitably, the Polaroids were always my favorite pictures.

There’s something oddly comforting about that slightly blurry, 3-inch by 3-inch picture that recalls an earlier time. The fidelity of the image, the focus and framing, it just wasn’t the point back then.

It was just about an honest attempt to capture a moment in time in a way so that everyone could hold it and see that, yes, this did happen. We were here.

But, soon enough, the Polaroid will fall by the wayside with no film to power the millions of cameras sitting unused in drawers around the country. Generations will grow up with no concept of what it means to “Shake it like a Polaroid picture.”

The public outcry at the announcement that instant film would be discontinued convinced Polaroid to begin work on a new generation of “instant.” Their first offering, the Polaroid PoGo, goes on sale at Best Buy tomorrow.

The bigwigs at Polaroid have tried to keep up with the changing times with this new device.

“Everyone has cameras on their cell phones already,” they thought. “There’s no market for new cameras. We’ll just make an instant photo printer!”

The new PoGo is a smallish rectangular prism, about 3 inches by 5 inches and an inch deep. Via Bluetooth or USB cable, the printer uses a new thermal printing technology, requiring no ink cartridges, to produce waterproof 2 inch by 3 inch prints in about a minute.

The special paper is surprisingly inexpensive, just $10 for 30 prints, undoubtedly cheaper than old Polaroid film. But, unfortunately, that’s about the only good thing I can find to say about the new, $150 innovation.

Despite the relatively small size of the device, how many people are actually going to carry their PoGo around with them to get those instant prints? For most people, the PoGo will simply sit at home after a few nights out, making the new “instant” no better than the photo printers already out there, save for fact that you won’t need to buy ink.

The photos won’t even look as good as the ones that the original instant film produced. Rather than faded and blurry, by all accounts the new “Polaroids” often have vertical lines in them, an artifact of the printing process that’s far less appealing in this digital age than the analogue warmth imparted by instant film.

But, despite all of these complaints with the new PoGo, none of these even begin to approach my main concern.

With the PoGo, you get to choose what pictures you print.

You may be marveling at the fact that I consider that a negative, but perhaps my favorite part about Polaroids is that you only get one shot. And regardless of what goofy face someone’s making, what’s going on in the background, or the fact that your dog jumped in front of the frame at the last second, that shot is getting printed out.

As I flip through my stacks of Polaroids a lot of those shots, ones that I’d think are horrible and delete instantly from a digital camera, have become my favorite pictures as the years pass by.

I love the mystery of the Polaroid.

I love the fact that its pictures are a little fuzzy, as though not even the camera is sure that what it’s photographing is really happening, or that it should be recording it. It’s imperfect, like our own memories, rose-tinged snapshots that recall the spirit of bygone days better than the actual facts.

And, perhaps, I am viewing the Polaroid through rose-tinted glasses myself. How on earth can a blurry, oddly shaped photo be better than a crisp, super high-resolution shot from a modern SLR?

Perhaps it’s just nostalgia. Perhaps I should say good riddance to the Polaroid, and welcome the new age of digital.

But I can’t.

I want the nostalgia factor. I want that sense of history that the camera instantly imparts to everything I photograph with it. That’s why I bought the darn thing in the first place.

Eventually Polaroid may shrink their new PoGo. Eventually they may even build it into a camera, automatically printing out all the shots that you never thought you wanted to see.

And, eventually, they may even improve the technology, with new filters so the pictures take on a hint of that vintage quality while remaining artifact free and technologically advanced.

But, until I see that product, I remain unswayed.

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have some Polaroid film to buy while I still can.

To contact Alex Cantatore, e-mail acantatore@turlockjournal.com or call 634-9141 ext. 2005.

Originally published in the Turlock Journal 7/5/2008.
Retrieved from the Turlock Journal Web site.