Oh, but! I want to say something about this camera too. It’s about the plastic Polaroid I-2 lens.
Modern plastic lenses can be incredibly sharp. The flagship $1,000+ smartphones use them. Polaroid’s new I-2 lens is sold as the sharpest Polaroid lens ever made — sharper than the one in my SX-70 camera (which has been considered to be the sharpest lens up until now on this type of a camera since the 1970s when it was released: analog.cafe/r/polaroid-sx-…)
One video even showed a comparison between the two cameras (youtube.com/watch?v=kBJzE6…) Of course, those were not scientific measurements and Polaroid hasn’t shared any of their technical data.
I am sure that the new lens is sharper, but that is not what makes a camera lens good (unless you’re just starting with photography and that’s all you know, which is unsarcastically great!) But the character of bokeh, vignetting, contrast, and other distortions are a huge part of the experience — and no review put out thus far has mentioned any of these. And of course, I’m curious about durability.
I’ll keep an eye out for more feedback and deeper dives into this camera. Polaroid didn’t send me mine so that’s all I have for now, unless the blog does really well this fall/winter and I end up purchasing one to test and maybe keep for a very long time.
This is obviously a huge milestone for Polaroid, formerly Impossible Project. 🎉
Dmitri Sep 8, ‘23, edited on Mar 14, ‘24