It’s Polaroid Week – and what is a Polaroid exactly?

Instant photography was a popular thing a while back but has recently picked up in popularity and it’s been something we’ve been doing for clients for quite some time. Of course we’re lucky that Polaroid Originals (formerly the Impossible Project) has been fighting the good fight to keep actual Polaroid format film alive, but Fuji has also been supporting instant photography with it’s Instax films as well (which just recently began offering square formats just like the original Polaroids).

Often times people think of Polaroid and instant photography as the same thing but we wanted to clear up some of the differences since it’s Polaroid Week this week!

Polaroid of course is the iconic American company that Edward Land, the Steve Jobs of his time, made famous. The SX-70 was perhaps the most famous Polaroid but there were many models made through the years. The shape of the Polaroid print is also quite iconic and is well known to most. Even the original Instagram logo took homage to Polaroid as well as the many filters that made digital photos look more like an original Polaroid print.

Fuji Instax is a different format altogether and has different shapes for their film. Instax shots are often more crisp and represent color more accurately compared to Polaroids which often have a more soft, warm & ethereal feel to them. Gizmodo has a recent write up of the new film and camera that Polaroid Originals is coming out with that discusses this.

If you are looking to have instant photography at your event you should first ask yourself what the goals are of the images. If you want crisp, sharp images with true-to-life colors then you might just want digital photography with on-site printing, but if you are looking to have a real one-of-a-kind print, then only actual Polaroids or Fuji instax are the better fit.

If you want people to be able to take phone photos and print them to actual analog prints, we can do Instax and/or Polaroid prints (which cost more than digital prints). If you would like digital prints we can offer an Instagram station to print whatever is hashtagged a certain tag to be printed digitally as well. There’s basically a ton of ways to mix it up depending on what you want your final product(s) to be and what the goals are of the images. Just reach out to our team and we can advise you on the best options for the goals of your event. There’s something at every budget level but it’s important to be clear on what you are getting and what you want to get out of it.

Below are some examples of different film types so you can have an idea of what the final products are (as well as a digital photo for comparison)