Polaroid’s new YouTube video features Fred, the puppet who freaks out when the film is about to go through an X-ray machine.
The instant film factory and brand Polaroid (a.k.a., The Impossible Project analog.cafe/r/a-brief-hist…) likes to keep its YouTube channel diverse. Every couple of months, there’s a new video that seems to have been made by a different team. They’re all pretty good.
Three new videos dropped this month. They feature a puppet character named Fred, who has a thick French accent (which sounds like “Friend” when he says it). He sings and talks about Polaroid cameras. I think it has Sesame Street vibes.
The second video of the series (youtube.com/watch?v=rmHPnE…) has Fried freak out at the airport customs when he finds out that the film is about to go through an X-ray.
X-ray exposure can damage film, depending on the type of X-ray machine used, the sensitivity of the film, and how the machine was set up. But, generally, it should be OK to send Polaroid through X-ray once or twice (as long as it’s not a CT scanner; see analog.cafe/r/air-travel-w…).
The puppet’s freakouts looked comical, perhaps in an attempt to soften the fact that Polaroid film is difficult to shoot (it has just 3.5 stops of dynamic range analog.cafe/r/polaroid-600…). Or to poke fun at pedantic photographers. WNB?
Close focus may be tricky to nail while zone focusing. Even at 𝒇8 (the same aperture as the famed Polaroid SX-70’s widest, analog.cafe/r/polaroid-sx-…), it’s hard at 0.3m with a 90mm lens.
I think Christine Turek did a wonderful job here with her portrait of Mila.
Dmitri
Dmitri