Have you ever felt nostalgic for the days when instant photography meant snapping photos with your Polaroid Land Camera and watching them develop? Well, those days are back—though the instant prints have been downsized a little, and you don't have to unfold the camera.
Polaroid has brought back its film-based instant photography with the Polariod 300, a $90 camera that snaps business-card sized photos with that "classic" Polariod plastic border.
The new instant film costs about a dollar a photo. While the image size is only 1.8 inches by 2.4 inches in size, the value is really in the entertainment that comes from using the camera and having instant gratification—not in the size or resolution of the prints themselves.
Of course, if you want to have both instant gratification and the advantages of digital photography—like better resolution, multiple copies of a single photo and deleting photos you don't like—Polaroid also has the PoGo Instant Digital Camera for $200. It prints 2"x3" photos on a film that doubles as stickers, but it also is a 5 megapixel camera that is SD memory card compatible.
Personally, I prefer the digital camera because it lets me re-shoot before I print. But then again, the fun of the analog camera is in the surprise of the results—and capturing a moment on in a single, plastic-edged work of performance art.
