Polaroid: Edwin Land, Instant Photography and the SX-70
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- Опубликовано: 9 май 2020
- Edwin Land was one of the most visionary, brilliant, and influential figures of the twentieth century. His company, Polaroid, was a direct extension of his insatiable curiosity and drive. In this video, I unpack the history of Polaroid, Edwin Land's genius, and the rise and fall of instant photography.
Recommended Book:
"A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War" by Ronald K. Fierstein
geni.us/d9tj
Content Credits:
Photos from Polaroid Archives / Baker Library / Harvard Business School, Unsplash, Wikipedia, Creative Commons. Videos from Internet Archive, Polaroid, carborundum1, KKD1247.
Polaroid (Today):
polaroid.com
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In the early 70's I obtained one of the first SX-70's and was in college at the time. On a Saturday night I had the camera in my jacket pocket when I went to a bar in New York City with some friends and started to take some pictures at a friends urging. In 10 minutes time, I was the most popular person there, with people lining up to have their pictures taken, amazed that they could watch the photo emerge before their eyes. I was offered $1,000 for the camera (turned it down) which would not be seen in New York for about another year. I kept having to have film sent to me as I'd constantly run out. It was indeed a very exciting time. I went from a Model 104 pack camera to an SX-70 felt very privileged. Those were good times.
Fantastic!❤ F.i.P.
I found out last year that Edwin Land is a cousin on my dad's side! He was in my grandfather's generation. I never met him, but he was at my dad's bar mitzvah. He had 535 patents, which is 3rd behind Edison and Thomson.
Edwin Land is one of the men i look up to. He was a self-taught inventor and businessman who pushed what he could do and made his vision a reality. I love seeing the thought processes behind these early pioneers and how they changed the world. As an avid shooter of Polaroids myself, I further love to see this work
Brilliant and professional presentation and history of the SX70. Reminded me that back in 1974 I worked for a firm who came up with the idea of offering an SX70 with each new piece of equipment we sold as an effort to boost sales. These were purchased in bulk and distributed to the sales force. This gave me a golden opportunity to try one, which I did most weekends and loved it so much I bought one. A brilliant camera and I still use one today.
Excellent presentation of a great American story. I remember when the SX-70 came out, and seeing my first one at a friend's house. Back in those days, there were Polaroid families and Kodak families. I grew up in a Kodak family, but always loved the look of a Polaroid.
I came here after watching lots and lots of Polaroid camera videos on how they work. I'm glad that I found this and now I truly understand why Sir Edwin Land was known as a genius and also why the SX-70 is one incredible camera
I have an SX70 that was my grandfathers. I remember my amazement when he took my picture on Christmas morning in the late 1980s as a little boy and I saw myself develop right before my eyes. I miss my grandad and feel so proud to have this iconic camera. He loved technology.
Polaroid went bankrupt in 2008 because the head of the company used it and its investors to run a Ponzi scheme. The resistance to digital was only a part of it. Also, it was an incredible company for the people who worked there and their families. They employed tons of people in the Boston area, and the closure put a lot of folks out of work. There's a lot more to this story that you can only learn from the former Polaroid employees and families.
Would love to hear that story! You can find my email address in the video description if you'd care to share.
I needed to do research on this for school for a project that is due tomorrow and I haven’t even started so thank you
A nice and focused overview of the history of this camera.
I've been looking for good documentary on Polaroid for a while, and this one is the best one on this subject so far. You even recommended the book!
Awesome - thank you!
A coherent well conceived presentation well suited to this medium.....are we digital now! Particularly enjoyed the clip of Morita an old family friend.
This was an absolutely awesome video. Love all the insights into polaroid history
Thanks Todd. I have just finished reading "Insisting on the Impossible" The Life of Edwin Land Inventor of Instant Photography by Victor K McElheny, so was online looking for any old footage of Land. Your video was a perfect synopsis of many weeks of reading!! Thanks again!
Brilliant story, thanks for gifting this to us all
Thank You for this in depth story of The SX-70 and Dr. Land. In the 70's, I was a contract photographer and Polaroid was a client. When the 70 was invented they gave me 4 cameras and 2 cases of film and said TEST IT! I worked for a couple of weeks and turned in my work. One of the images was a 5 year old girl on the knee of a grandfatherly man. Dr. Land said he wanted an original of that image in every camera store in America. They called me to Cambridge and gave me the assignment to produce 12000 originals of the image. There is a film that tells the story:studio.ruclips.net/user/videoCXVCTIVaCSk/edit.
In the years I worked for Polaroid, I had the opportunity to be on the stage with Dr. Land, a shareholders convention where I used the SX-70 on stage to photograph models in constructed sets. All great memories. Seeing this video brought it all back.
Your stuff is always great. Really enjoyed this!
That was fantastic, I had NO idea. Thank you for putting in all the hard work to produce this video. Keep em comin Todd! All the best to you and your family.
thank you for this wonderfully produced video, Dr. Land will always be my hero , I visited his grave to tell him so As a lifelong photographer , when people would ask me which camera was my favorite , I always shot Canon/Nikon/Hasselblad/Leica , yet my answer will always be "Polariod". Big deal was to shoot & be photographed by the Polariod 20-24.
The SX-70 was ground-breaking. I own several of them (including the SLR680). And I can still buy current-production film.
I was an early adopter of the new films being produced by the Impossible Project. I still have a few unopened boxes fro that time (kept refrigerated.. I'm recognized as an Impossible Pioneer by the company. Fast forward to today, Impossible bought all of the rights to the Polaroid brand,, and officially rebranded itself with the name Polaroid.
Thankfully, the films are still being produced.
Thank you , Todd.
Amazing video! One thing worth noting: Polaroid made sure to equip all the top artists and creatives of that time with an SX-70, thus turning them into early adopters and starting a cultural trend which made everyone else want to jump on it asap.
Outstanding independent documentary.
What a great video 👍🏻 It made my eyes water a bit since it's such a bitter sweet story 🥺
Thanks for this video. I loved it so much! Well done man! 🙌🏻
Thanks for putting this video together! well presented nice contributions, overall insightful.
Great video! Very informative and entertaining. Hoping to see more of such work.
Great video ! It was my bday today, i had a Polaroid as a gift ! Very happy we've discovered your Channel ! It was a trip back in days we will never ever see with our own eyes ✨
High quality content as always, thank you!
Wow... Fantastic!! Todd!
Amazing work. Enjoyed every minute of the video
Excellent video and what a story to tell!
This was amazing! Very good commentary, thank you!
Great work on this!
Thanks a lot for sharing these pieces of history. I always love to know how technology's evolved through time.Your presentation style is so sensational. Thanks again
An amazing video!! I loved every part of it !!!!
What a great and lovely family treasure! Good for you that you were able to inherit that camera from your mother. Great video with nice info for all those we love photography.
EXCELLENT Video! By far the most complete ... thank you!
Thanks!!
Thanks for the informative video.
Absolute great video. Thank you for sharing! Subscribed.
This was amazing! love it! So informative, educational, interesting, and you did a fantastic job putting it all together... the best documentary Ive seen in a while!! So it was Sony that first invented the DSLR ( 16:09 ) ? I had no idea! And those variable ND filters on the train windows...amazing! haha.
Wow. Amazing video, and great book recommendation. Cheers!
I watched a documentary called “Time Zero”, and one of the people interviewed said the film had always been profitable, so it’s interesting how Polaroid fell. Especially with what Polaroid became in the early 2000s...
Great video! 👏🏻 very educational and thank you for the book recommendation.
This is outstanding. Bravo 👏🏼
Wow, Todd your enthusiasm about product marketing & development was really revealing, nice presentation and very informative!
Dale Lewis Thanks Dale. Glad that comes through!
THANK YOU. This is the best 22 minutes I’ve ever spent on RUclips!
Your video was so interesting and made me quite emotional to learn how Polaroid came to it’s demise, after all Edwin Land’s hard work. The gentleman at the end who said he’d worked for Polaroid for 37 years and loved working for Edwin Land..... what an emotional and fitting tribute for a well respected brilliant inventor.
I purchased my first SX-70 Sonar from eBay recently and have been drawn to finding out more about it’s history. I learned more from you in your video, than my other sources. Thanks again 😀
Thanks Beverley!
Excellent documentary!
Nice presentation. Really enjoyed it
Hey! Just finished your fine video. Thanks for all the hard work. I've been working with film again, specifically an old Pentax 67, but about an hour ago I took a couple of amazing pics of my kids in the pool with you guessed it, an SX-70 sonar that hasn't been used in years. I popped in some black and white film, it made all the wonderful sounds, I snapped the pics and of course, the magic happened like it was 1979, and everybody was thrilled all over again. What an invention!
I started my Polaroid film hobby in September of 1992
Very nice history. Thanks for sharing… still have some Pack Film in freezer
Great feature I learned a lot from it thanks for sharing!
Great video. Thank you!
Glad you liked it!
Really interesting! Thanks a lot for this enthusiastic and professional presentation of Edwin Land's life.
Fantastic. Glad you enjoyed it. :)
Amazing video! Congrats!
Thanks!
Great video. What's more, Land revolutionised our understanding of human colour vision with his retinex theory
Thank you very much for this great video! :-) What a fantastic story of Polaroid.
Great story thank you so much!
Great video, that is the quality !
Thanks!
Superbly interesting and educational - a great documentary
Thank you Richard. Glad you enjoyed it!
nice info. thanks
amazing video bro 🙏
Edwin Land impacted the lives so many people and was brilliantly man I have so much respect for him
Love the pinball machine in the background. Ironically, 15 minutes before watching this video, I was working on mine.
WOW! The production quality and research in this video are outstanding! How does the video only have 5K views!?
Thanks Thomas!
Je ne connaissais pas son histoire. Merci
excellent video, i thought my polaroid videos were in-depth
Thanks Max!
The fact that Dr. Land did NO market research and yet pursued his dream product which became iconic is just fuckin’ ballsy!
love that lemtosh!
Great video. Thanks. Edwin Land was certainly a genius and the SX-70 was an engineering tour de force, but you didn't mentioned that the SX-70 prints were terrible. A major reason for the decline of Polaroid was the high price and low quality compared to conventional photography. The peal apart photos were decent, but the SX-70 images were often totally unusable.
Thanks Jim. Yeah, instant prints have always been a “beauty in the eye of the beholder” thing. Some people use presets to get that yellow white look in their digital photos! ;) I’ve actually heard that the Kodak EK-6 prints were better and longer lasting, which is an interesting wrinkle to the story.
Rubbish. You obviously were not the best at shooting if that’s your take on it.
As much as I believe Land was an absolute genius, I feel the company failed with SX70 film. SX70 film was never nearly as good as peel apart film. My dad bought the Polaroid Swinger in the mid 1960s and the black & white peel apart photos were sharp and they stood the test of time. My dad bought the SX70 but was frustrated with both the color and the not very sharp images. Swinger photos from the 60s still look new, sharp and unfaded. Sx70 pictures have shown fading and color shifts with age. Sadly improving the sharpness of SX70 film and beyond never seemed to be important. I loved using Polaroid instant slide film. The black and white slides were as sharp as regular 35mm film.
Awesome comment. Thanks Tom 🙏
But whats up with those new fujifilm instax cameras?
I recently found a family photo that was taken on one of the Kodak instant cameras. The weird thing about it is it's a matte finish instead of the traditional glossy so it just looks a little weird to me for an instant picture.
Land also had a lot to do with the camera system on the Corona reconnaissance satellite.
In terms of polarization this is laughably off base. Iceland spar is birefringent, relative to it's optical axis it splits the viewed image into two polarized images, one of which cancels grazing reflections due to the Brewster angle effect. Land did not invent the polarizer, but instead devised a means of making one based on stretched polymer film and dyes that could be mass produced cheaply and in huge sizes and quantities. Make no mistake, this was a spectacular achievement and an integral part of every LCD display produced today, but he didn't invent to polarizer.
15:00 Kodak laughing in the distance because that’s all Kodiak makes anymore go to Walmart and all you can find by Kodak is instant photo cameras and film
It’s not comparable to Polaroid or even Instax though - those are glorified zinc printers
I was born in 1976 and I think that if I still have all the pictures of my childhood it's because my parents didn't have a digital camera. 🙄
I was born in 1996. Half of my photos were in digital & other half film. My mom used film, my dad used digital. & my mom still has all of our photos, my dad doesn’t because he saved everything in his computer & the computer broke. Yet he hates film photography. It has become more reliable for me as for long term storage. I shoot both film & digital. I cringe that people rely solely on social media to create their digital albums. Anything can happen & they will lose their images… only thing that can happen to a photo album is just misplacing them or a house being burned. 😣 but take good care of them & they will last a life time.
@@ellielopez1615 exactly. I am an architect. The convenience of digital photos at work is priceless. But for mi lifetime memories? No way. I am not against digital, but I fight hard to make people understand that it is not the only thing we'll ever need.
🎂Edwin Land 05-07-2022 📷
The most comical thing about Polaroid instant film was all the women i came across that would use it for nude photography. The Hollywood Tropicana was notorious for bikini clad girls getting in shots with patrons using Polaroids.
I see the link was deleted. The video of me shooting 12000 Polaroids can be found on You Tube "The man who shot 12000 Polaroids.