While digital cameras enable you to instantly check how your image looks like, they don’t give you truly instant photos! The real instant photos are given to you by the Polaroid-style instant cameras which are making a comeback. Let’s see what instant photography is and how you can find the best instant camera.
What is Instant Photography?
Instant camera can be defined as the one which gives you a physical print of your photo without the help of any other device and instantly after you make the exposure. Polaroid which stopped producing their line of instant cameras and films is the most famous company for this. Today, Fuji is still producing instant cameras and films and is getting great popularity. Kodak too had started producing them, but left the venture soon.
Instant photography needs a special instant film which traditionally comes in a pack of 10 pieces, loaded inside the camera so that you get ten photos. Each of these pieces of film has a packet of chemical attached to its one end. The image is projected by the camera on the film and then the chemical is spread over the film by rollers while the film comes out of the camera. The image is developed by the chemical reaction which takes a few minutes and then it can be visible to you.
Special Instant Film
As mentioned above, Polaroid suspended its production of instant cameras and films. But some very dedicated persons bought the old equipment and has started running it. This has been given the name ‘Impossible Project’ and various instant films are being produced from the vintage Polaroid cameras.
On the other hand, Polaroid has made an alliance with Fujifilm.
Fuji produces consumer instant film in two formats. Professional style films are also produced by them which have special backs. Instax Mini is one of their consumer films which can give out photos of about credit card size. Another Instax Wide consumer film produces around 6cm x 10cm size images.
Instant Cameras
Only a limited number of instant cameras were produced initially. However, you can still buy vintage Polaroid cameras easily online, and in thrift shops and flea markets. You can get the best guidance on which Polaroid and Fujifilm cameras are the best on Hypepedia.com, where they have given comprehensive reviews of various instant cameras and many other products.
Fujifilm offer some different cameras for the Instax Mini film, most of them being of the size of a digital point-and-shoot camera. For Instax Wide, they offer one camera, i.e. Instax 210.
Benefits of Instant Photography
Instead of waiting for many days to get a print of your photo in hand, instant camera gives you the prints immediately and you can enjoy watching the photos. If your friends assign you the job of recording their event, you can catch the photos and give the prints immediately to your friends.
Also in today’s era of privacy, instant photography is way safer, because it doesn’t produce any negative and not any digitally archived file is saved anywhere. While they can be scanned and uploaded somewhere on the web, they are still considered as safer and less intrusive.
Drawbacks
While instant photography seems super cool, it has some drawbacks too; e.g. you cannot share instant photos online. Also if you want multiple prints of certain photos, you have to scan them.
However, instant photos have their own charm and enjoyment of getting the photos immediately in your hand. Read instant camera reviews on Hypepedia.com and get one to get instant result of your work.