After 60 years of making instant pictures, Polaroid is peeling back from its film photography business. Polaroid quietly stopped manufacturing instant film cameras last year and will cease production of instant film altogether in 2009. The company will instead concentrate on its other interests, including selling Polaroid-branded digital cameras, digital photo frames and LCD televisions.
Edwin Land, er, developed the first practical instant-picture system in the late 1930s for his Polaroid company, at the time best known for its polarised sunglasses. The photographic system used film packs with built-in chemistry to deliver a print in less than a minute. Land's first camera and film system was released in 1948, with a range of innovative colour and black and white films following suit.
The Polaroid company famously (and successfully) sued Kodak over patent violations in the 1980s, and produced one of the first commercially available digital cameras, the PDC-2000 of 1996. However, Polaroid filed for bankruptcy in 2001, with a new company - the Polaroid Corporation - emerging from the ashes of the old.
Fujifilm - licensee of Polaroid's instant film technology - will continue to manufacture Polaroid-designed instant film under its Instax banner, as well as the FB100B and FB100C instant films for ID card printers and medium and large format camera systems.
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