This blog post is inspired by a thread that happened on Reddit. I personally responded to it as I’m a Mod for R/Polaroid. But I realize that there is a ton of misinformation and folks who don’t know what’s going on. Modern Polaroid Film isn’t what it used to be. Further, there are great reasons for that. And in this blog post, we’re going to explain everything to you.

The following is from a post on R/Polaroid, where I’m transparently, a mod for the subreddit. So I’ve taken a summary I wrote there and modified it for this blog post. I hope that it will provide a lot of clarity on some of the misinformation out there. Specifically, this tidbit made me write this post.

Polaroid lost their original formula since their rebranding with Project Impossible and Polaroid Originals and the team are actively working to improve the image.

The Fall of Polaroid

Years ago, Polaroid screwed up very, very big. They were already on the decline because the world became very anti-analog to embrace DSLRs fully realizing what they could do, and early mirrorless digital. So to make themselves look cool, they literally hired Lady Gaga as their creative director without the funds to do it. Kodachrome was also on its way out then, and the entire analog photo world was in disarray. This was more than a decade ago.

Polaroid shut it doors, sold itself off to a Chinese company, and started to go the route of making zInk cameras. They survived and thrived off of their name alone for a few years. But no one took them with any bit of seriousness.

The Death of Polaroid, and the Birth of the Impossible Project

When Polaroid shut their doors, Florian Caps and a few others bought the factory and tried to recreate Polaroid’s formula. They asked Polaroid for help, but Polaroid refused to do so. This is how the Impossible Project was created. Caps and others started the project to find a way to keep Polaroid film alive.

Progress was made slowly and in a questionable pace. They focused on the 8×10 cameras first quite a bit along with a few other models like the SX-70 and more. They had a beautiful, and cozy gallery shop in NYC back then where they’d show the prints off. They were gorgeous but had to be experienced in person to really be felt, sort of like a Leica camera. Back in December of 2010, Impossible said that they were making progress and created a version of PX680. This and a lot of the smaller format films had problems.

Some of those problems:

Fading

Issues with the film and spots

Bad colors

At my desk is a box of both Polaroid and Fujifilm instant film. And it’s very clear what’s what.

Then they found a way to take your phone’s photos and print them on their film. This is when the Impossible Project started to refocus a bit more. One of their biggest problems back then was that the film faded really hard. So they literally created something called color protection film. Impossible Project film continued to improve, but still wasn’t up to what Fujifilm was making.

Polaroid’s Rebirth

Speed up ahead, and a few things happened. Polaroid was bought by shareholders. Then the same shareholders also bought the Impossible Project. This brought the two companies under the same banner finally. Impossible film was rebranded to be called Polaroid Originals.

By that, today’s Polaroid is not the same company that started in NY that many years ago. Neither is Kodak, Kodak Alaris, Kodak Moments, or any of its variants. Fujifilm, Ilford, and Lomography are still the same companies they’ve always been. The modern Polaroid is not at all the same company that Edward Land founded.

So Will Polaroid Film Ever Improve?

Personally speaking, no, the current Polaroid film will not ever look like the original stuff in my opinion. I’ve got photos of me from McDonald’s when I was super young (I’m almost 35 when writing this). It hasn’t faded a bit. And then I look in my desk drawer of Impossible Project and Polaroid originals film that I shot in the past few years. Some of it has fad...