(Photos: Amelia Krales)
The Impossible Project was created in 2008 in order to preserve Polaroid’s instant film process after Polaroid revealed that it would be killing it off, and in the past few years at least, it’s a bet that worked. The project has kept a tiny part of the photography market alive with the supplies that are necessary to continue shooting this particular brand of instant film.
The company then spent a few years making and peddling something called Instant Lab, a pseudo-camera that used your smartphone to expose Polaroid 600 instant film, and it also helped revive limited runs of a few of Polaroid’s most iconic cameras.
But the Impossible I-1, announced in April, is really the Impossible Project’s first foray into making a new camera that uses the Polaroid 600 format that the company resurrected. And of course, it’s a Polaroid-style camera that was made in 2016, so it’s appropriately equipped with smartphone connectivity.
After spending some time with it, it’s clear that the $299 I-1 is a camera made for the same niche that the Impossible Project was created to serve. It’s not going to be the camera that brings many new shooters into the instant film fold, but that’s not what it’s meant to be in the first place. It’s for photographers who want to keep shooting on a type of film that is teetering on extinction and, more specifically, the ones who are sick of scouring eBay for refurbished Polaroid cameras. Yes, it’s been dressed up with an internal battery, Bluetooth, and a companion app — things that traditionalists usually loathe to embrace. But those additions don’t get in the way. In fact they enhance the experience of what is, for better or worse, still very much a Polaroid camera.
Impossible Project I-1 camera
The most striking thing about the I-1 is its look and feel. It’s compact, it’s light, and it is gorgeous. The matte-black finish gives it the high-touch look of an Apple product, and it also makes it really comfortable to hold. My favorite part of the slick design might be the camera’s pop-up viewfinder, even though I never used it much. It snaps into the top of the camera satisfyingly with three small, strong magnets. (One thing that could be changed, though, is the on / off switch, which appears in the form of a ring around the shutter, and is far too easy to accidentally switch on.)
Other instant cameras on the market, like Fujifilm’s popular Instax series, have the most basic controls — your only option is typically an indoor or outdoor setting, maybe a flash if you’re lucky. And the I-1 can operate in this straightforward manner if you want it to. There’s a three-step switch on the right side of the lens that lets you under or overexpose your photo (or keep it neutral), and a switch for the flash on the opposite side. The shutter sits on the right side of the camera and has two stages: half-press to focus and full-press to shoot. It’s a fairly simple camera to pick up and figure out, and this could be your entire experience with the I-1, if you like.
Impossible Project I-1 camera
But the reason people will want to spend $299 on the I-1 is what lies beneath that surface layer of interaction. While other mashups of old and new often feel forced — like the semi-digital 8mm film camera that Kodak announced at CES this past year — the Impossible Project officiated this marriage smartly. There's not so many connected features that the I-1 feels like a digital camera, but the new stuff that is there changes the experience for the better.
Inside the camera is a Bluetooth radio that allows the camera to pair to your phone, letting you to fiddle with the manual controls in a way that’s not previously been possible with instant film cameras. In fact, aside from loading the film cartridges, the app is capable enough that you could get by never touching the I-1’s physical controls.
"The I-1 has a beautiful, striking design"
In the app — which is iPhone only for now, an Android version is slated for later this year — you can pick from a wide range of apertures (f10 to f64) and turn the exposure time up all the way to 30 seconds. There are modes that let you use your phone as a remote trigger, you can perform double exposures, set a timer, and do long-exposure light painting.
I’m not a Polaroid buff, but going in, I thought this deep level of control would sell me on the I-1. While I like the point-and-shoot nature of some other instant cameras, their basic settings (apertures typically locked to f8 or f11, for example) require excellent lighting conditions. I like to tinker and experiment when I shoot on digital cameras, so I’ve always craved more control when I’ve picked up something like the Fujifilm Instax Wide.
So for a while, the I-1 scratched that itch. I shot from the hip, but I also used the app to plan out more complicated shots. For example, I was able to set the camera up on a bar, rack the shutter time up to 15 seconds, and take a long exposure from a few stools away. That’s not some sort of revolutionary photographic concept — you can do that with any digital camera and even your phone — but there was an inherent thrill about finally being able to do it with a camera that immediately produces a physical version of the picture you just took.
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By Sean O'Kane
Source: The Verge
