Look Ma! No cords!
01.14.09
I am having so much fun with new technologies. Really. It took me awhile to embrace digital photography, then again for me to be interested in cell phone cameras as the new Holga, and now for the next generation of the Polaroid. Honestly I cried every time Polaroid stopped production on one of their films and then when they ceased production all together of their instant films I wanted to lock myself in a closet and never come out. Polaroid is awesome in all of its’ horribleness.
I have an old land camera that was my mothers. She got it as a high school graduation gift, and I only recently used it for the first time. I found some old packs of Polaroid on Ebay, it said they had been discovered in the back of a church refrigerator, what better place to keep them relatively usable right? Well, whatever the truth may be, except for the initial bit of tape being decrepit and losing that first frame, the rolls of film worked well, and I had a blast using all 5 rolls and taking all 40ish pictures. (not counting mis-fires and my mis-handlings).
While Christmas shopping this year I happened upon a little pink Polaroid box, all shiny and new, packaged in the best plastic and priced to sell at a mere $89.98 at Sam’s Club. I thought it must be a new camera but upon closer inspection, found out it was a little instant printer. Don’t get me wrong, I like big prints. My current show features 20×30 framed prints. Big, I like. Big. But this little tiny pocket-sized printer was intriguing. The prints coming out of it are 2×3 inches, so petite! It had me reminiscing my first medium format camera, a Bush Pressman 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 sheet-film camera my dad had used in college working for the school paper. Back to the days of WeeGee.
I happen to love to shoot medium format, and when I got my Mamiya RZ 6×7 I was an addict. My favorite thing to shoot next to black and white, is color slide film. It is just so pretty in the larger format. Ahhh, but I digress.
Here is this little tiny printer, a polaroid instant printer at heart, 10 pictures to a pack of paper, portable and fun. I loved it the moment I saw it. The best thing about it, well I don’t know if it is the best but one of the fun things about it is its’ bluetooth capability. I paired it with my new LG Lotus and printed a few quick pictures. Fun, cute, prints! There is something I never expected from my cell phone camera! But there is more, USB capable it works with pictbridge so I can hook up my big Canons to it as well! Now I have to do some more experimenting with this little thing to know its’ full potential, but in reality, polaroid instant prints have always been a benchmark in professional photography. Even though it is unusable now I have a polaroid back for my Mamiya, because film is expensive and re-shoots are often impossible. Yes for many shoots in the digital age, the computer would be ready at hand for any serious work, but this little printer is so tiny, and handy, I can see using it for many things. Especially for travel and sharing images with my subjects.
I could go on and on, and really I already have, but this new little toy. How fantastic! I am already hooked.
My Pink Zink was about $90 at Sam’s Club and they run upward from there, available at Amazon.com to Target, along with the media.
Tags: bluetooth, cell phone, instant, instant camera, photograph, pictbridge, picture, pink, Polaroid, printer, printing, wireless, Zink