Rob Walker, for the New York Times has an interesting piece looking at people who still long for a Polaroid world.

The Polaroid Corporation, long an innovator in all things like instant-film, sonar (or “sonar-like” devices), battery technology has, shall we say, gone by the wayside.

Beyond the fact that the film was exorbitantly expensive, and the resulting image usually quite contrasty (at best), the very fact is that Digital, in all it’s forms, has marched like Roman- soldiers all over Polaroid’s marketplace.

Pre-flight checks of lighting and camera set-ups, before you commit to “real” film, quick snapshots of little Billy or Samantha in their new Easter outfits, late-night exposé of pre- and post-coital spouses have all been replaced by the higher quality and less expensive results of digital-files.

You can get a reuseable 1gb compact-flash card today for about the price of a 10-exposure pack of Polaroid “one time use” film.

The digital files have higher resolution, better color rendition and wider latitude than Polaroid ever did. Plus, the digital files don’t fade in a year, so when you want to get back at that ex-spouse, you just bring up your “personal photo collection” of them to post on Flickr.

Polaroid does have that certain “look” to it and there are ways to achieve that digitally. I have also heard that Fuji will be bringing to market Instant Film, just like Polaroid. We’ll see if they’re able to do better at it than when Kodak made their foray into Instant Film and got the lawyers at Polaroid all worked up. I would think, this time around, Polaroid will handle things differently.

I think the licensing efforts of the Polaroid brand, similarly to the licensing efforts of another mega-company, Pan Am, will do little to alleviate the situation, especially since the branding has been on less than stellar products, the likes of which you can get cheaper (but no more poorly made) from any store that sells Korean made electronics.

We’ll see how the newly announced Zink printer will do, but I’m not holding my breath for their “new” paper technology (which in and of itself sounds very Polaroid-film like). The packs of instant-print paper had better come in way cheaper than their film was.

Polaroid was great when there was no alternative, but I think, like the Ice Box that was replaced by the Refrigerator, Polaroid’s time has come, although, speaking for myself, it took a lot longer to get here than I would have ever imagined.

Check out the N Y Times article here.