I traveled 8000 miles for the camera that killed Polaroid

It’s the kind of story that can form the basis of a company’s identity and, if they’re lucky, the script for the eventual fictionalized biopic: A brand that masters one type of technology takes a bold, risky step into the great unknown; can carry the industry into the future.

It’s a great story… when it succeeds.

When it doesn’t, grasping so boldly at the brass ring of new technology can hinder a company for years. So you probably forgot about the Polaroid Polavision camera. And your likely reference points for Polaroid are recent licensing deals that have brought their instant cameras back into an ironic, kitsch zombie existence, which only rubs salt in the wound of the late ’70s attempt to redefine home movies.

In development for over a decade, Polavision was touted as Polaroid’s biggest and most important innovation yet. Just as the company pioneered the instant camera, it would also enter the 80s as a leader in instant video. That was the plan anyway. Polavision was a unique film production system consisting of a handheld device. camerafilm cartridge and a special imager that will both process the film (using a new type of color-adding process that allows instant development) and display what is being shot. Polaroid co-founder Edwin Land viewed Polavision as a personal crusade. Despite some internal resistance (primarily from Polaroid president Bill McCune), Land introduced the camera at Polaroid’s annual shareholders meeting in 1977, and it hit store shelves that same year, supported by advertising featuring numerous photographs. poorly played tennis and aging Hollywood legends like Danny Kaye.

However, problems were evident from the beginning. Each film cartridge could only hold about two and a half minutes of footage. It also failed to capture any audio. Because of the slow film speed, each “film” needed a tremendous amount of light to successfully render an image. It worked mostly fine outside during the day; colors were grainy and dull, and there was a lot of “noise” in the image, but overall you could tell what was going on. But indoor shots were often extremely muddy, and you could almost forget about shooting anything at night without klieg lights.

Despite its innovation, Polavision failed to capture consumers’ imagination like Polaroid’s instant camera, and initial sales were low. To make matters worse, JVC and Sony were about to release primitive versions of the camcorder in the early 1980s; even in their nascent form, these versions surpassed Polavision in image quality, recording length, and audio capture ability.

“Polaroid was an absolutely dominant company in the 20th century.^he century,” says host Kevin Lieber Popular Science Retro Technology video series. “They were dominant in instant photography and thought the next big thing was going to be home movies, and that was the Polavision camera; It was a very ambitious attempt to break into video. And it failed. It’s really bad. This event ended within two years and is seen as the turning point in the company’s eventual collapse.”

Still, for enthusiasts like Lieber, a working Polavision camera is the Holy Grail, just as it was for Edwin Land. But due to the complexity of not only the film itself, but also the equipment required to shoot and view them, getting all the pieces in full working order became an adventure that would make Indiana Jones proud. Lieber set out to make an episode Retro Technology It’s on Polavision and, without spoilers, he’s found himself on a three-month Odyssey that wouldn’t feature in a typical web video.

“I didn’t expect it (to turn into such a journey),” he says. “This actually almost turned into a feature-length documentary because it was one of those rabbit hole situations where I kept digging deeper and deeper and deeper…it was an incredible path to follow.”

The biggest problem was that the film did not have a long shelf life. “The tapes themselves used a reagent similar to what instant cameras use—a chemical reagent to develop the film,” Lieber explains. “And all of that has dried up because 40 years have passed. “Chemicals are actually just dust.”

Undeterred, Lieber tracked down a tech collector nicknamed “Doc” living in Austria who had several Polavision film cartridges in cold storage, as well as a camera and even a projector system. Now the question was, “Do any of these still work?” You can watch our video to find out, but suffice to say it’s far from a simple “yes or no” answer. It was more like a Russian nesting doll: One man’s fight to dominate the home video market in 1977 led to another man’s fight to save a failing company, which led to another man’s mission to make a Polavision video in 2024. It was not successful, it is almost secondary to the idea that innovation and forward thinking should always be supported, even in failure. And you never know whether this bold idea will become a technological footnote or the bastion of a new future.

Or maybe it’s just a good story.