<p>Question for something I’m writing: Can anyone remember when Polaroid cameras changed from having the backing you peeled off after developing to having the picture develop before your eyes?</p>
<p>Aparent,</p>
<p>Wow, you have brought back some memories. I am really shocked no one mentioned this on the you know you are old when thread :)</p>
<p>I cheated, did a search and this is what I found</p>
<p>*The Polaroid Land camera or, as it is now known, the instant camera, is the most commonly recognized invention of Edwin H. Land. A chemist and physicist, he revolutionized the amateur and professional photography industries by inventing and producing a camera that incorporates its own processing lab, producing finished prints in less than a minute.</p>
<p>The inspiration for his invention came in 1943 during a family vacation, when Land snapped a photograph of his daughter. The three-year-old was impatient to see the results, and even as Land was explaining that she would have to wait, he was formulating the first plans for his instant camera.</p>
<p>Normally, once film is exposed, it must then be developed, rinsed, fixed, washed, dried, and printed. The instant camera eliminated several of these steps, delivering a finished print. The key to Land’s instant camera was actually in the film, which featured a pod of chemicals located at the edge. When the film was squeezed between the camera’s two rollers, the processing fluid in the pod spread over the picture between the exposed negative and positive sheets. In conventional photography, the unexposed portions of the image are washed away; in Land’s invention, images were transferred to the print paper in contact with the film negative.</p>
<p>Although Land’s initial instant camera was a notable success, he kept improving and producing an even better product. The first photographs rendered by the new camera in 1947 were sepia-toned–a warm, brown color–due to the chemicals involved in the process, but within ten months of the camera’s debut in stores, black and white film was also available. By 1963 the Polaroid Corporation made color film available for its instant camera. All three types of film used essentially the same kind of diffusion transfer process described above.</p>
<p>By the 1950s Polaroid film and cameras had become extremely popular. A multitude of amateur photographers were attracted to the Polaroid’s immediate results and the opportunity to “try again” if the results weren’t satisfactory. Professional photographers also began to use Polaroid backs on studio cameras in order to perform test shots, evaluating lighting, composition, and decor instantly before taking a conventional photograph.</p>
<p>The 1972 introduction of the new SX-70 color film meant that the entire development process could be completed within the camera, eliminating the need to pull the sheet from the camera and peel the negative from the positive print. Processing time was reduced to ten seconds as a result of the introduction of ultra- fast film. However, until the 1998, black and white film was unavailable for the non-peel Polaroid camera. Two years earlier, Polaroid introduced an instant camera that shot 20 x 24 inch (about 7.9 x 9.5 cm) color pictures, though it was not generally available on the commercial market.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>The SX-70 was a folding single lens reflex Land Camera produced by the Polaroid Corporation in the 1970s. It was the first and only instant SLR in history (and perhaps the only folding one as well) and the first camera to use Polaroid’s new SX-70 integral print film, which developed automatically without the need for intervention from the photographer. The SX-70 was also notable for its elegant folding design, which allowed the camera to be relatively compact when collapsed. There were a variety of models beginning in 1972 with the original SX-70, though all shared the same basic design. Later models were often equipped with a sonar autofocus system. Though expensive, the SX-70 was popular in the 1970s and retains a cult following today.</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SX-70[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SX-70</a></p>
<p><a href=“Photoethnography.com - Classic Cameras”>Photoethnography.com - Classic Cameras;
<p>hope this helps.</p>
<p>Thanks for the early morning blast from the past (polaroid swinger jingle running through my mind).</p>
<p>Sybbie, thanks so much for the info – and the reminder of that Polaroid swinger jingle rotfl!</p>