Since the demise of Polaroid The Impossible Project are the only company that presently makes film for the Polaroid 600 Camera as well as I-Type, SX-70 and Spectra emulsions, which is great, as it means that we can still use a variety of old polaroid cameras. Hooray! However, the problem is that because Impossible had to reverse engineer the emulsion recipes, the consistency in quality and colour is not there. Boo! The shots below, were five of about thirty that I had to throw out, as there was nothing on them, due to the emulsion issues. The brown that you can see on the frames, is the base of the frame, the blue/cream/green parts are the sections of the image that were successfully processed. It has been a while since I have bought any Impossible Project, as I am disappointed with my more recent results. Before I bought the last couple of batches, I was doing ok with Impossible Project, as I had received a couple of packs that had fewer issues than those frames shown below. In time I will buy more, but, I hope I have more success with whatever batch I buy in the future. The results below are not typical, but are not rare for Impossible Project users.
I like that Impossible Project are trying to revive these formats, so I will continue to support them. However, the film itself is expensive (€20 for the least expensive 600 pack) and you get eights shots in each packet, which is two less than the original Polaroid packs. This together with the hit and miss nature of the quality means that I won’t be buying any too soon.
If you like these camera formats, Impossible Project is the way to go. However, FujiFilm is releasing a square format instax in March/April of this year, this may damage Impossibles sales. The main difference is that the 600 cameras is 3.1 × 3.1 inch in size, the new FujiFilm Instax Square Format is Image size: Height 62mm x Width 62mm, Photo size: Height 85.6mm x Width 72mm. So the Impossible Project is bigger, but, the FujiFilm Square Instax will be more reliable, cheaper and it will be easier to find refill emulsions for it.
I shall do a review of the Instax Square when I buy one.
Thanks for reading my blog.
Gallagher Photography 