For the past five years, the Polaroid instant camera brand has been trying to renew itself.
The Polaroid Go at 119 euros reveals a desire to challenge Fujifilm's all-powerful Instax mini.
But the photos taken by the Go are smaller and more expensive.
What fly stung Polaroid?
With its new Polaroid Go, the manufacturer is launching the world's smallest instant camera.
Almost half the size of a classic "Pola", it is not only too cute: it also inaugurates a new photo format.
The charm is in full swing, but does the Go stand up to the competition?
A turning point in the history of Polaroid
The Polaroid saga has continued to rebound since the takeover of the company five years ago by Polish industrialist Slawomir Smolokowski.
At the head of the company which almost disappeared in the 2000s, Oskar, his son, aged in his thirties.
Enterprising, the young boss is trying to restore its splendor to the Polaroid brand founded in 1937. After various instant cameras, such as the OneStep 2 launched in 2017, or its connected version OneStep + in 2018, the new Polaroid Go marks a turning point.
The idea of Polaroid: to offer an instant camera that can fit in a pocket and accompany us everywhere.
Measuring 10.5cm long, 8.39cm wide and 6.15cm high, the Go hands down the challenge of miniaturization.
It looks like a model of a traditional Polaroid camera as the youngest knows how to use the aesthetic codes of its elders.
Among them, the logo in five emblematic colors of the brand, placed above the lens.
The gift of double sight
Without adjustment, the Polaroid Go is nevertheless equipped with a digital frame counter, a flash, and the possibility of taking so-called "double exposure" shots. Or the superposition on the same view of two images, creating an artistic effect. By pressing the shutter button twice consecutively and changing its position in front of the lens (while trying to keep the camera stable!), It is quite simple to obtain an original rendering to amaze the gallery.
Pleasant in hand, easy to handle, it is oddly lacking the little user manual necessary to uncover these functions, triggered by the same button (the one with the Flash logo) on the top of the Go. After investigation, it will be necessary to press it once to activate / deactivate the flash;
twice consecutively to start the Double Exposure function.
Polaroid also mentions on its site the presence of a self-timer that we still haven't found at the time of writing ...
In addition to the viewfinder on the back of the camera, the Polaroid Go has a mirror on the front to better frame your selfies.
Do not hesitate to frame a little tighter, the Go having a little tendency to leave material around the subject photographed.
The preserved square format
But who says smaller box also says smaller photos.
With its new toy, Polaroid is advancing a new paper format.
The views are logically reduced in size with a sheet format of 6.6 x 5.4 cm for a photo area of only 4.6 x 4.6 cm.
Polaroid wanted to keep its legendary square format and white borders, including the one below the image, large enough to accommodate a handwritten caption.
Observation: the photos are… really small!
Smaller than those made with Fujifilm Instax Mini cameras (8.6 x 5.4 cm).
Format requires, the brightness specific to Polaroid photos with their glazed appearance is also less apparent.
1.24 euro per photo
Per pack of 2 x 8 views (19.99 euros), the instant prints of the Polaroid Go cost 1.24 euros per unit, against around 80 cents per unit at Fuji.
And right now, Polaroid doesn't offer black-and-white film, as it does with its other instant cameras.
Still, it is this famous Instax Mini from Fujifilm that Polaroid wants to try to compete with its Go sold for 119 euros.
The target is the same (young people eager to share their memories instantly), but the photo format is narrower and the price higher.
The Polaroid Now camera launched barely a year ago at 129 euros, allowed to find the original Polaroid photo format (10.7 x 8.8 cm with a photo of 7.9 x 7.9 cm), but with views coming in at almost 2 euros each.
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