I recently took my first Polaroid picture. While I have been into film for years, I recently bought a brand new Polaroid 300 camera in 2012 for my birthday. It’s an investment in the future of cinema that opens up a whole new world of retro photography. Plus, you won’t have to worry about raw footage in camera-bag”>camera in camera bags for months. While the Polaroid 300 camera is undoubtedly a re-branded Fujifilm Instax Mini 7s, it’s fun to use a camera that has the iconic Polaroid brand.
The Polaroid 300 camera is a fixed focus camera with four scene modes and automatic shutter release. If you look for the smallest digital cameras, you will find 4 5/8-inch high by 4 5/8-inch wide and about 3-inches tall, the cameras will be huge by modern standards. But the ergonomic controls work well. Simple control. My camera was turned on, pulling out the lens housing. The scene mode is selected by a rotary switch on the top of the camera. The settings are indoor/dark, cloudy/shadow, light and bright.
Film is loaded per 10-shot cartridge and runs between $10 and $14 per box. At a $1 shot you quickly learn not to take pictures of priceless things like the family dog. You can shoot Polaroid PIF-300 film or Fujifilm Instax Mini film on the Polaroid 300. When you take a picture, the exposed film is ejected from the top of the camera. The image starts in seconds and the film remains chemically active up to 10 minutes after exposure. The images themselves are small. They are usually business in size and measure 2 1/8-inches by 3 3/8 inches. While they have a traditional white Polaroid border, the photos themselves are a little smaller at 1 7/8 by 2 1/2 inches.
300 Polaroids are made for instant photos at parties, family gatherings, wedding receptions, and other social events. . It’s a fun camera for taking pictures of people up close. However, when our dog was idle, I packed in my Polaroid and took photos of the cities around Atlanta. While some photos came out too light or dark, the camera produced some amazing photos. I enjoyed the challenge of working with the camera and looking for great results. In the world of zoom digital cameras, Polaroid forces you to walk up to the subject as it fills the viewfinder. You should also adjust the viewfinder offset slightly to adjust your image. You can rotate the camera depending on whether you want to take a shot with portrait or landscape orientation.
Out of 17 pictures, one failed to develop, 2 came out a tad dark, and 2 came out covered in bright objects fading into oblivion. One shot that may not turn out is simply too bright or too harshly handled by me. I took a bright arrow looking up at a skyscraper on a clear sunny day while sitting at a stop light and then almost shot through it into the box where it landed face down in the previous photograph. It turned out to be the best of the park with strokes of human subjects or objects. I didn’t have any problem scanning the images on my computer using a cheap pandigital scanner.
I looked at both the Polaroid 300 at Target and the Fujifilm Instax Mini 7s at Walmart before buying the Polaroid 300. I ended up liking the color scheme from Polaroid at Target better than the whole white scheme of the Fuji Instax Mini 7s. The all-white camera is a little too Andy Warhol for me. The Polaroid 300 camera retails for about $70.
The Polaroid 300 is an interesting camera. It has some obvious disadvantages: the cost per shot and the small picture size. But the conversation is also started and it immediately provides developed images that you can give to people. If you know the motion picture of Lomography, you will enjoy the Polaroid CCC. If you like to bring your camera to social gatherings, you’ll love the Polaroid 300. Definitely recommend giving it a try. Here is some photography video as film photography.
Sources:
Polaroid 300 Camera Packaging
Amazon.com
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