polaroid

We are delighted to publish Jerry Jobe’s latest mobile photography/art tutorial for our reading and viewing pleasure. This week Jobe takes a look Polamatic by Polaroid. Read his thoughts as he puts it through its paces (foreword by Joanne Carter).

Polamatic by Polaroid retails for $0.99/£0.79 and you can download it here.

“The advent of digital photography made it possible to check immediately if you had captured a shot you liked, without having to wait until an entire roll had been shot and processed. On the spot, you could decide that the subject had been blinking or if you’d been photobombed by wildlife.

Those of us who grew up before digital had a real-time option also: instant film. The king of instant film was Polaroid. Each exposure was its own little package, consisting of photographic paper and a backing with developing chemicals. You took the picture, and the packet was forced out the front of the camera. You peeled the backing away, and the picture would come into view in front of your eyes. Amazing technology, especially for those of us who didn’t have darkrooms and had to send our rolls of film away to get them processed.

It was very expensive, however. Each image, each little packet came at a cost. Inevitably, your friends would put their hand in front of your lens at the worst moment, enjoying the look on your face as another 50 cents or a dollar was wasted.

Nevertheless, a lot of nostalgia built up around “instant” film. It got to where amateur photographers craved the smell of the developers tossed away with the backing. So it was inevitable that app developers would try to recapture those days with Polaroid-style camera apps.

I wasn’t ever swept up in the Polaroid craze; too expensive. But I’ve tried a few of the apps, and wasn’t all that excited – until a recent update of the app Polamatic. It advertises itself as the official app of Polaroid, and was developed by Dana Shakiba. The new release (v5.0) expands the effects by an order of magnitude! The original app emulated the popular Polaroid 600 film, but Polamatic has gone from a single film to ten types of Polaroid film”.