Through Rikyū’s writings, I was introduced to the phrase ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会), which literally means “one time, one meeting.” Wikipedia describes it as the “cultural concept of treasuring the unrepeatable nature of a moment” – a reminder that each meeting is unique, and we should cherish it as such. Even if the same people meet at the same place again, a particular gathering can never be replicated. We can never step in the same river twice.

Last year I bought a Fujifilm Instax Square SQ1. It’s an instant camera, as the name suggests, which takes pictures on square-format film. 

This article is not a review of the Instax Square SQ1 – for that I refer you to James’s excellent piece which influenced my decision to get this camera. For now, the only thing I want to emphasize is just how simple it is. The camera lacks some of the more advanced features of certain other Instax cameras, such as a way to preview our images before we print them, exposure compensation, and self-timer. In fact, the SQ1 literally has just two controls – a dial for activating Selfie (or close-up) Mode, and a shutter release button.

Despite – or perhaps because of – this extreme simplicity, the Instax Square SQ1 is a joy to photograph with, and I use it more than I expected.

Fujifilm Instax Square SQ1 Review - Simple, Square, Instant Photography

James reviews Fujifilm's newest Instax camera, the strikingly pretty and surprisingly capable Instax Square SQ1.

Photography, in a sense, is the art of capturing fleeting moments. For a while now, I have been thinking about the idea of ichi-go ichi-e – one time, one meeting – and how it applies to photography. I like taking pictures, and in addition to my phone, I tend to carry at least one other camera with me. With digital cameras, I often take dozens of (sometimes indistinguishable) photos. But what if I met a friend and limited myself to just one portrait? Would precious moments be lost to me forever, unrecorded and forgotten? Or would that one recorded moment somehow assume greater significance and value?

Instax film, I thought, would be especially apt for a project like this. You press the shutter, an exposure is made, and a single square of film is ejected from the camera. You can scan it of course, as I have done for the photos in this article. But unlike a digital image, an Instax is a tangible thing. And unlike a conventional film photo, it’s unique (you can make multiple prints from a single negative, but an Instax image is one of a kind). What better medium for a project about the precious and unrepeatable nature of a moment in time?

My SQ1 came with a free cartridge of Instax Square Monochrome film. Each cartridge has 10 sheets – a manageable number. I set out the parameters of my project: simple and spare, in keeping with the overall philosophy. One photo per friend. No retakes, even if I mess it up.

My first subject was Kwang, who has collaborated with me on any number of photography experiments.

The Instax Square SQ1 has an always-on flash, and while direct on-camera flash is undeniably a vibe, sometimes it can be interesting to mix things up. One way to hack it is to use an off-camera flash with an optical receiver function, which means that it can be set to fire when it “sees” another flash.

For this shot, I set up a Godox AD100 flash on camera-left, with a $5 white umbrella as a shoot-through diffuser. When making the exposure, I held a small piece of foil at an angle in front of the SQ1’s flash. The foil deflected the flash off to the left; it didn’t light Kwang herself, but the off-camera Godox AD100 “saw” the flash and fired synchronously.

This photo, and a few others in this set, are actually shot in Selfie mode. The Instax Square SQ1 is optimized to focus at about 6-10 feet in default mode. This is good for half-body or full-body shots, but if I want to frame more tightly, I switch to Selfie mode. All this does is to bring the focus distance forward to around 18 inches. Selfie mode is intended to be used with the camera pointing towards yourself – there’s a selfie mirror next to the lens, to help you frame the shot – but you can also just shoot as normal (camera pointing forward) which is what I do for close-up portraits.

Unlike Kwang, whom I’ve known for years, Muzi and Wu Chi are new friends; the day I took these two photos was only my second time meeting them. One weekend Muzi texted me saying, “Want to go to a dog cafe? Can pet puppies.” She asked me this with no preamble whatsoever – without even pausing to ascertain if I like dogs. I was amused, and since I had never been to a dog cafe before, I said yes.

I thought perhaps Wu Chi, the third member of our impromptu excursion, was a dog-lover. I asked her as we entered the cafe.

“Um, actually I’m a bit afraid of dogs,” she said. But after a while, she was comfortable enough to pose with a big Samoyed.

Afterwards we went to a restaurant which specializes in food from Dongbei (northeast China). In the photo, Muzi is holding a giant pork rib. Unlike the earlier shot of Wu Chi, I took this in selfie mode from about 18 inches away, and for me, it’s the least successful photo of the set.

The Instax Square SQ1 is a compact camera with a direct (as opposed to through-the-lens) viewfinder, so when you’re that close, you have to watch out for parallax. Clearly I wasn’t paying enough attention, because the framing is off and Muzi’s face is mostly obscured. Oh well.

The next photo, on the other hand, is one of my favorites. My friend Russ worked on a textile and light installation at a mall here in Singapore. The drapes were shiny white, Instax film has a relatively narrow dynamic range, and the SQ1 has no exposure compensation. I wasn’t sure if it would capture the highlight detail on the cloth, but it did a fine job in the end.

That same afternoon, we went to Peace Centre – a mall built in the 1970s which is now being demolished. In the last few months before its demise, with the stores shuttered and the tenants gone, the mall has been given over to artists, performers, thrift stores, exhibition spaces and graffiti. Kai (in picture) was the one who suggested we check it out, and I’m glad we did – just one day before it closed for good. It was my first and last time at Peace Centre, so this photo of all the ones in my set feels like the most literal embodiment of ichi-go ichi-e.

The Instax photo was taken outside, but I’ve also included a couple of shots made with my Fuji X-E4, where I tried to capture the vibe inside the mall.

The next two photos are both in my apartment, but on different days – Tomoe looking at her negatives (she came to pick them up from a film lab in my neighborhood) and Redwan helping me cook a lavish meal for two. The photo of Tomoe is over-exposed – Instax can be a bit hit-and-miss – but in the one of Redwan, the camera did a great job of balancing the bright background (natural light) and Redwan who was lit by flash.

I wanted at least one full-body photo in the set, and I saw my opportunity during a dance shoot with my friend Olivia. We shot a whole sequence under the water-tower with my Fuji X-E4. Then, as we were moving on to the next location, I took a quick candid on Instax of Olivia walking downhill.

“I think my eyes were closed,” said Olivia. But I stuck to my self-imposed limitation of one photo per friend; no retakes. Her eyes are indeed closed, but you only see it if you look closely.

There were two of us taking photos of Olivia that day – me and my friend Li Ling who is a wonderful family photographer, but wanted to try her hand at dance photography. After the shoot, we went to a ramen place for dinner, and I asked Li Ling if I could take a picture of her. Like a lot of photographers, she doesn’t like being in photos, so it’s apt that she’s hiding behind her camera, incidentally also a Fuji.

During the Lunar New Year weekend, my Chinese friends took me to a karaoke bar. One of them – Muzi – had already featured in my project (albeit partly hidden by a pork-rib), but the other two had not: Irene, who was leaving Singapore and going back to Shanghai that very night, and Huiwen, who I meet several times a week but had somehow not yet taken a photo of.

At that point I had just one shot left, so I decided to set aside my one-pic-per-friend policy and take a group photo. Rules and constraints are all very well, but they are a means to an end, and ichi-go ichi-e, after all, is about cherishing the time we spend together. It was the last shot of the pack, and a last evening of togetherness before Irene left for China. Let’s not overthink this, I thought. What would Sen no Rikyū do?

When the film ran out, I loaded another cartridge – color film this time. One of the karaoke-bar staff offered to take a photo of us. The picture developed to collective oohs, we all signed it with a marker, and Irene had a nice little souvenir to take back home to China.

Isn’t Instax wonderful?

I enjoyed my ichi-go ichi-e project, and I got a lot out of it. Some nice photographs, a better understanding of the strengths and limitations of the Instax Square SQ1, and most importantly, some happy memories.

By limiting myself to one photo per friend, I found myself devoting more thought to how and where I want to portray them. Some were pre-planned – Li Ling is a photographer, so I wanted to show her holding a camera – while others were spur-of-the-moment decisions.

An Instax photo can be scanned or otherwise reproduced, but the original is unique; it has what Walter Benjamin called the aura of the authentic. Like the moment itself, the Instax image can never truly be repeated or replicated. For these and other reasons, Instax – more so than a digital or even a film photo – feels like an event. You take the photo, a blank white square is ejected, and there is the breathless wait to “see what came out.” The reactions become a part of the experience, and part of the memories too. “Oh no, my eyes are closed!” (Olivia) “What a photo, I look like an artist!” (Redwan) “We look so alive!” (Huiwen)

The Japanese tea ceremony (chanoyu or “the way of tea”) has many different styles and philosophies. Sen no Rikyū, whom I mentioned earlier, is associated with wabi-cha, a school of chanoyu which emphasizes radical simplicity. Rikyū wrote, “All you need to know about chanoyu is this: boil the water, make the tea and drink it.” Using the Instax Square SQ1 is a bit like that: point the camera, press the shutter and make the picture.

And what kind of picture do you get? Most of the time, a good one – or at least, that has been my experience so far. Sometimes, the picture is out-of-focus or off-kilter. But if so, what of it? Memories are sometimes out-of-focus or off-kilter too.

The Instax Square SQ1 is a simple camera, but I am a simple photographer. By limiting our options, the camera sets us free. By getting out of the way, it lets us immerse ourselves in the moment. Olivia dancing down a grassy slope. Wu Chi nervously petting a Samoyed. Cooking with Redwan. Making new friends, and saying goodbye to old friends, hoping we’ll meet again soon. Moments pass, but some leave a mark. And when all is said and done, isn’t that what photography is about?

One time, one meeting. And if we are lucky, a picture to remember it by.

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That’s exciting stuff, even if the camera’s price isn’t. At $600, the Polaroid I-2 costs $450 more than the brand’s “standard” camera, the Polaroid Now+.

When the I-2 released in the fall of 2023, Polaroid’s marketing team positioned the new camera as a high-end tool for discerning photographers who care about nothing more than making instant images of the highest possible quality.

Hey, I thought. That sounds like me!

But I have a long and checkered history with modern Polaroid cameras and film. Often, I’ve found the quality of both to be sub-optimal, frustratingly failing to live up to their potential and price. The result is that I’ve never been able to write a review or article in which I can wholeheartedly recommend buying and using Polaroid cameras and film, unless the reader is ready to waste at least some small quantity of their time and money. Especially when so many decent Fujifilm Instax cameras exist.

Ever the optimist, when the I-2 was unveiled I put a call in to my friends at B&H, requested they send me one, and quietly wondered if the newest, fanciest Polaroid would be another instant letdown.

I’ve spent the months since then shooting the Polaroid I-2, and I’ve ended my time with it quite surprised.

Polaroid I-2 Spec Sheet

• Lens: 98mm f/8 lens (approximate 35mm full frame equivalent = 38mm f/3.2)
• Focus: LiDAR autofocus; minimum focus distance 1.3 feet (0.4 meters)
• Exposure modes: Manual and auto exposure modes (aperture priority, shutter priority, full program)
• Metering: Center-weighted metering spot covering 60% of the center of the image area
• Shutter speeds: 1/250 second to 30 seconds
• Lens aperture: F/8 to F/64
• Flash: Built-in, with effective range 0 – 8.2 feet (0 – 2.5 meters)
• Flash modes: Auto, Off
• Viewfinder: Optical with LCD info display
• Battery: Internal lithium ion battery rechargeable via USB-C
• Additional Features: Exposure compensation controls; Multiple exposure setting; Self timer; External OLED info display; 2.5mm flash port; Tripod mount; Bluetooth enabled (app for remote control and settings)
• Dimensions: 5.9 x 4.7 x 3.6 inches (149.9 x 119.3 x 91.2 mm)
• Weight: 1.2 lb (563 grams)

Main Features of the Polaroid I-2

Polaroid spent four years developing the I-2. The result of that effort is that they legitimately produced the most advanced Polaroid film camera ever made. Just compare the spec sheet to any other Polaroid camera; the I-2’s major features are really impressive.

It’s capable of shooting in all of the shooting modes that we’d expect to find in a modern mirror-less camera. Aperture priority, shutter priority, full auto, and full manual are all present and accessible with the press of a button. This means, among other things, that the user is able to control depth of field and exposure times, something that very few instant cameras allow.

The metering system employs a center-weighted metering spot which covers the central 60% of the image area. Exposure times in automatic and semi-automatic shooting modes allow exposure compensation in 1/3 stop increments to +/- 2 EV.

The lens is not glass, but rather a three-piece unit comprised of polycarbonate and acrylic elements which have been coated for anti-glare. It has a 98mm focal length (equivalent to a wide-standard 38mm lens in 35mm full frame terms), which has been touted as the sharpest lens ever put into a Polaroid camera. I sort of believe it. The I-2’s lens is certainly the sharpest lens in a Polaroid camera, post-bankruptcy.

There is no manual focus mode, but auto-focus is achieved via a LiDAR system, which works as it should even in dim light. The system has just a single auto-focus point, in the center of the frame, however the camera allows for a half-press of the shutter button to lock focus and exposure. After which, we are able to recompose our shot for subjects that may not be positioned directly in the center of a photos (where the AF spot is). Focusing is quick and accurate, though a bit noisy. Focus distance is displayed in the viewfinder and OLED screen.

Polaroid I-2 Instant Camera (Black)

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First Impressions

The Polaroid I-2 is a well-made machine, and holding it in the hand leaves no room for doubt; it’s the best-made instant camera on the market today.

The chassis and body are made of aluminum alloy and impact-resistant plastic. The lens barrel is made of metal with a metal screw-in filter ring. The shutter release button is an anodized aluminum touch point with a red, satin sheen, a detail which hearkens back to the red shutter release button of the iconic Polaroid SX-70 SLR. The external info display is an OLED screen. The strap lugs are metal.

The body is shelled with a sort of matte satin plastic, yet it doesn’t feel like the plastic of entry-level Polaroid cameras. It feels tight, solid, and dense, and the numerous panels are fitted together with  precision.

The controls are responsive and intelligent. The multi-function dial which lives behind the lens spins into its detents nicely, with corresponding changes to settings appearing near-instantly in both the external OLED screen and the in-viewfinder LCD display. The exposure compensation dial clicks into its 1/3 stop detents with a similar feeling of quality.

The film door flips open with a release lever typical of Polaroid cameras, and it locks into place nicely. Inside we find the brass and plastic gearing and the steel film rollers that are responsible for film transport and chemical dispersion. They’re nice and solid, and in my time with the camera I’ve not had a jammed photo or improperly squeezed chemical pack, things that happen too often with other Polaroid cameras.

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The Polaroid I-2 in the Real World

The Polaroid I-2 uses either Polaroid I-type film or Polaroid 600 film, both of which are available everywhere cameras and film are sold (I often buy a pack alongside toothpaste at Target).

I-type film is less expensive (because it has no battery built in), but aside from this difference, I-type and 600 film are essentially the same (identical sensitivity, or ISO). The only advantage to using 600 film is that Polaroid often releases special editions of 600 series film which they do not release as I-type film. Round frames, black frames, multi-colored frames, duo-chrome film, etc.

It’s also possible to use Polaroid SX-70 film, however this film has a lower ISO compared with I-type and 600 series film, so users will need to adjust their exposures accordingly.

For me, I’m shooting I-type exclusively, because it costs less and works best. Except for when Polaroid entices me with something special in their 600 flavor.

What’s been really appealing about the I-2, is that I’ve found it can be whatever I want it to be. If I want a point-and-shoot Polaroid, it can do that. I set it to Auto and fire away. Whenever I used the camera in this way, it performed beautifully. Exposures were accurate, focus was accurate, and images were as high quality as any modern Polaroid images I’ve ever seen. In fact, they were higher quality, most likely a result of the camera’s lens and advanced systems (compared to other Polaroid cameras).

What sets the I-2 apart from other Polaroids, however, is the user’s ability to actually influence what’s going on in the camera.

In instances in which the subject was backlit, or when I wanted to blur the background, I was able to switch to aperture priority mode or use exposure compensation. If I wanted greater sharpness I could stop the aperture right down to f/64, and the camera handled selecting the correct shutter speed automatically. If I wanted motion blur to emphasize movement, I could switch to shutter priority and slow the shutter, knowing that the camera would select a smaller aperture to compensate. No other Polaroid camera does this.

Engaging in this type of photography successfully requires at least some degree of understanding of the photographic exposure triangle. Not a big deal, if you’re a camera nerd. But people new to this sort of thing will likely burn through a couple of packs of film before figuring things out. (After which, they won’t find a better Polaroid camera for making good pictures.)

Polaroid Color i-Type Instant Film (8 Exposures)

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The viewfinder is lovely. Crystal clear and absolutely massive, it’s been a real treat. Even as a wearer of glasses, it has been easy to frame and shoot, relying on the parallax frame-lines when shooting up close subjects. While this isn’t dead accurate, it’s good enough.

The in-viewfinder LCD display is a revelation which reminds me of the advanced SLRs of the 2000s. It shows all of the information we could possibly need to make a photo, without requiring the user to remove their eye from the finder.

It’s also reactive to our selected shooting mode. In aperture priority, it shows our selected aperture, the camera’s automatically selected shutter speed, and the exposure compensation value. In shutter priority, it shows the same information inverted. In full manual mode, it shows our selected settings, and a miraculous real-time readout which shows how close to a proper exposure our selected settings will get us. It also displays our battery life, number of exposures left in the loaded film pack, and other information for flash and focus distance, as is pertinent.

This wealth of in-viewfinder information is something that some of the greatest film cameras ever made sometimes fail to deliver. To have it here is simply excellent!

What I don’t Like

The battery is a built-in lithium ion rechargeable pack. Which is nice, because it lasts a long time between charges, and is easily chargeable without requiring me to buy more batteries.

However, the battery is inaccessible to the end user, so when it inevitably reaches the end of its life, it’s not possible for the user to simply open a door and replace the old, tired battery with a fresh, new one. This design choice has the potential to render our $600 camera useless in a few years’ time (unless Polaroid offers battery replacement service – and will that be free?)

And of course, there’s the camera’s high price. We get a lot for our money, yes, but there’s no denying that the I-2 is an expensive camera.

Consider that the next best Polaroid camera costs $450 less than the Polaroid I-2. Is the I-2 that much better than the Polaroid Now? Or an Instax camera, for that matter? Do the user controls and the nice lens justify the price?

For me, begrudgingly, it does. But I’m a freak, a camera nerd who lives and breathes these things.

For the average person who just wants to take fun, spontaneous instant photos, the cheaper Polaroid will do nicely and the Polaroid I-2 will be nothing more than overkill, a financial splurge. For more casual photographers, it’s probably not worth the price.

And how much film can I buy for $450?

Image Samples

Showing the range of exposure available with the I-2.

Image Quality, The Film Problem, and Final Thoughts

For the past fifteen-or-so years, the argument against Polaroid has been that their film produces images of low quality, especially compared to the Polaroid of days past. This reputation stems from the recent history of the company. The Polaroid of today is not the same Polaroid of the 1900s.

When the original Polaroid company went bankrupt in the early 2000s, the company’s assets were sold to fund the pensions of the former employees. Polaroid’s last remaining instant film factory was bought and resurrected by The Impossible Project, a small group of Polaroid die-hards who dreamed of keeping instant film alive.

They succeeded, eventually, even growing rich enough to finally acquire the Polaroid name and IP sometime around 2017. Polaroid, officially, was back. But for a long while, the quality of Impossible’s film, and then Polaroid Originals’ film, and finally, straight up Polaroid’s film, failed to live up to the high standard of the former Polaroid of Cambridge, Massachusetts in terms of image quality, sharpness, contrast, etc.

I suffered through these years, photographically, as did older photographers who fondly recollect the golden era of instant film and Polaroid, who clutch photo albums full of Polaroids from the 1980s and ’90s which look as fresh and punchy today as they did on the day they were shot.

And so, the complaints about new Polaroid have lingered, repeated ad nauseam by those of us who remember (accurately or not) “the good old days.”

So ubiquitous have these complaints been, and so internalized has been my disappointment with Polaroid film over the last decade plus, that I approached my time with the new I-2 expecting further disappointment. I expected to take pictures that were spongy and soft and washed out and under-exposed, some which didn’t develop at all, and others which developed with strange white streaks or weird tan blotches.

So sure was I that my review of this camera would have to include a sad, lengthy section bemoaning the fact that new Polaroid film just ain’t wha’d it yoosta be, that I reached out to my friend Ned Bunnell, former president of Pentax USA and lifelong Polaroid user, to collect some of his thoughts on the quality of the old film compared to the new.

He did me one better. He sent me a photo album.

It arrived loaded with original Polaroid photos from thirty, forty, maybe even fifty years ago. And the photos, true to the anecdotes of the olds, were vibrant, punchy, sharp, and beautiful these many decades later.

I stashed the photo album safely away, my secret weapon against the Polaroid I-2, and shot the camera for the next few months.

Imagine my surprise when some of the I-2 pictures (admittedly, not all) came out as sharp, as punchy, as contrasty and deep and rich as those which I saw in Ned’s album of original Polaroids.

Top row, left to right: Modern Polaroid photo made last year with a cheap camera from the 1980s, modern Polaroid photo made with the new Polaroid I-2 recently, modern Polaroid photo made with a 600 series camera four years ago. Bottom row: Ned’s classic Polaroid photos from decades ago.

Detail shot of modern Polaroid film made with the I-2 last week. Note the author, nonplussed, hating being photographed, suffering for science.

Could it be? Could it be that all we needed was a $600 camera?

I don’t think so. I think the answer is simpler than that. The truth is that Polaroid film has been steadily improving for years now, and I’m cautiously optimistic that the stuff (finally) works. It’s not totally, universally as good as it was, but these days, it’s pretty damn good. The I-2 certainly helps.

But even if new Polaroid film isn’t as good as the old stuff. Does that matter?

The counter-argument is this: The past doesn’t matter. It’s as true for the car you should never have sold as it is for the love to whom you should have confessed. And it’s true for Polaroids, too.

We can’t go back. Retrospection is pointless. All that matters is today.

And the Polaroid I-2 is the best Polaroid camera we can buy today.

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Or maybe that I’d strike up a conversation with a kindly, old janitor. That they’d see the Polaroid camera in my hand and shout, “A Polaroid? You’ve come home!” That they’d bring me to a hidden storage vault wherein is kept the last 24 karat gold Polaroid SX70, new in box, a donation to my humble website.

I knew intellectually that nothing like that would happen. But I admit that I was taken aback when, as I drifted my way through Polaroid’s former headquarters upon the east side of the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just a few days ago, nothing happened at all.

No pictures on the walls. No memorial cabinets. No statues or monuments or relics under glass. Not even a brass plaque declaring “Here, from 1979 to 1996, the great Polaroid Corporation of Cambridge Massachusetts did repeatedly revolutionize the instant film industry and bring countless happy smiles to millions of camera likers the world over!”

I guess I should’ve known. My first hint of a disappointing result came earlier in the day when I had run into an old friend who happened, many years ago, to work for Polaroid.

“Oh, that reminds me. I’m going to go visit the old Polaroid headquarters. See what’s there.” I said brightly.

He paused for a moment, frowned slightly, and replied with a single word. “Why?”

I reluctantly admit to understanding his confusion. Though Polaroid’s founder, Dr. Land, held science and engineering in the utmost esteem and was always happy to say that Polaroid lived “between Harvard and MIT,” the original Polaroid company’s presence in Cambridge is long gone. Even before their (first) bankruptcy in 2001, Polaroid had moved much of their operation to towns far from the city center, or, even worse for the local workers who built the company, overseas. The Polaroid of today has no true relation to the Polaroid of the Cambridge years.

Still, remnants of the old Polaroid have lingered here and there.

I used to drive past a building every few days, and above its loading dock was pinned a sign, POLAROID LOADING DOCK. That building was demolished last year. A restaurant on Mass Ave displays a framed photo of Land sitting crookedly at one end of the bar. The MIT Museum holds an extensive collection of Polaroid archives, documents, and more. And of course, Edwin Land Boulevard has not yet been renamed.

I expected that if any place in Cambridge would have a fair amount of interesting Polaroid relics still kicking around, it would be the gorgeous building that they once called headquarters. And as fate would have it, I’d just been sent the Polaroid I-2, the new Polaroid company’s newest film camera. I needed sample shots for my review. A walk down the Charles River couldn’t hurt that need, and if the old Polaroid HQ happened to offer a few interesting shots or a trip to a secret underground Polaroid history warehouse, all the better.

But the past has a way of disappearing.

As I approached the squat, beautiful building, I framed a few photos and pressed the shutter release of the newest Polaroid camera. Out came the frame, which I tucked neatly into my pocket without looking.

The pale, white bricks of Polaroid’s former throne are interspersed with glass block and tightly framed windows, giving the building a rich texture, striking lines, and dramatic shadows in the autumn sun. A central tower rises amidst two slightly lower wings, and from out this tower projects a prominent, geometric cylinder of windows. Above this is an analog clock (installed during Polaroid’s ownership), and above this clock is a blank space which once boasted a massive, black-lettered POLAROID sign (gone, now).

The building today is tenanted and operational as an office, so I was respectful and a bit hesitant to enter, but a sign on the front door happily directed visitors to the back entrance, whereupon entering I found a lobby empty of any and all human presence, and a lonely reception desk. I spoke “Hello?” into the air five or six times, received no reply, and twirled in place underwhelmed. I sat in the comfortable lobby and waited, but no one appeared.

A set of stairs rose up on one side of the lobby, so up I went, announcing myself on every landing, optimistically seeking someone, anyone, who might be happy to chat about the building’s earlier tenants. I paused on each story to look out through that cylindrical array of windows. With each story I was gifted a better view of the flowing Charles River, the crisp golden leaves hanging in the trees, the brilliant blue sky, all lovely, persistent elements which Polaroid employees and executives and chemists and engineers must once have looked upon (and photographed?) from these very spots.

I hesitated through the halls of the building.

“Hello?” I called into the hushed places. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

But nobody answered, and I saw no one. I took a few pictures with the new Polaroid camera. It whirred loudly in the quiet, and I was hopeful that someone might come to see just what was making this strange noise, that I might announce myself and apologize for the intrusion, but to ask if anyone knew or cared about the building’s illustrious past. But no one came. No one was there. I felt odd and out of place. I touched nothing, drifted through, continuously speaking “Hello?” to nobody.

I climbed the last of the stairs to find a small utility space at the building’s highest level. Packed densely into this place, which was essentially an open-air closet for those who maintain the building, I saw a ladder, an access hatch, toolboxes, some mechanical panels that looked important. There were spare office chairs and shelving and desks and lamps being stored under a thin film of dust, the static necessities of a working building.

It’s here that I found the only sign that Polaroid had ever existed. An actual sign. A simple rectangle of thin plastic, likely survived from the days when Polaroid owned the place. It wasn’t even affixed to the wall, nor to a signpost or a hook. It simply sat on the floor, propped without care or ceremony against the baseboard of the wall.

“EXTERIOR POLAROID CLOCK MOTOR.”

A sign for the person who maintains the clock.

Fair enough. Time goes on. It must, and it does. In more ways than one.

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But to ignore these things is impossible, for they are simply too perfect to ignore.

I visited Perkins Cove last month with my family; my wife and our two little girls, aged six and eight. I brought a Polaroid Spirit 600 (which is an instant film camera from 1982), and two packs of brand new Polaroid film.

I’ve written in the past about my struggles with the modern version of Polaroid’s instant film, and the cameras which shoot it.

The images we get are unpredictable, too often of poor quality, and always expensive. Each photo made with Polaroid film costs about $2.50. Classic Polaroid cameras are mostly primitive and very basic, offering virtually no user control, no focusing aids, and no chance to tweak or adjust our image before or after the picture has been made. If we’re lucky, we have a rudimentary exposure control, but that’s it.

Newer Polaroid cameras are better in some ways and worse in others. The Polaroid Now, the brand’s current consumer-level camera, is a great product. It’s reliable and nicely made, but it costs more and has less charm than the retro cameras. Polaroid’s newest camera, the Polaroid I-2, is the first camera made by Polaroid in decades which features truly respectable user controls in the form of multiple shooting modes, aperture and shutter control, auto-focus, et cetera. It promises high quality instant photography for real photographers, but it costs $600.

The truth is that with Polaroid instant photography, it’s tough to have it all. But despite the cost, the inconvenience, and the frustration, I always come back to Polaroid film. I simply love it.

There’s no replicating the grinding gears of a vintage Polaroid camera ejecting its fresh exposed photograph, no duplicating the feel of a chunky camera from the 1980s, the creaky plastic and the hopeful experience of peering through a tiny acrylic viewfinder at the most important thing in the world, and praying that the stupid old camera in our hands happens to capture that importance on film.

Most of the time, it doesn’t. Sometimes, it does.

My daughter, Siena, is my little shadow. She follows me everywhere, a barnacle on my hip. She wants nothing more than to spend time with me, to share her thoughts and ask me mine, to share her favorite things with me and adopt my favorites as her own.

My daughter, Sophie, is an utter joy. For the first four years of her life, she was shy and quiet, but at some point which neither my wife nor I can exactly recall, this changed. She works now to hone her comedic timing, often bringing herself to the point of hysterical cackling at whatever joke or character she’s created in her mind, while the rest of us watch and smile and wonder, What’s going on in that head of hers?

My wife is my best friend. We’ve been together through the worst times of our lives, and more importantly (and thankfully far more frequently), the best times. And though life is stressful and busy and brutal (occasionally), when we’re together it feels as if everything is just as it should be.

In his fiction and essays, Kurt Vonnegut often reminded his readers to notice when we’re happy, to stop for a moment to think or to say, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” I paused at the crest of the Perkins Cove footbridge which connects the peninsula to the mainland, raised the Polaroid to my eye and snapped a photo of my wife and kids. Sophie smiled into the lens. The sun beamed down and glimmered off the water. The Polaroid squeezed its image through the rollers with a happy squeal and I stopped to think. “If this isn’t nice…”

It was mid-October and the temperature had dropped so that the trees that rim the cove had begun to close off the veins which carry fluid and minerals into and out of their leaves. The supply of chlorophyll in each leaf had been used up, some slowly and some quickly, and the green had gone with it so that the leaves had lit aflame in orange and yellow-green, some others shouting out a burst of bright red. Those which had fallen had done so by the thousands, creating a roiling carpet of earthy fire upon which our four pairs of boots softly crunched.

The boats were tied to their moorings in the harbor and the dinghies to their docks. The icy waters lapped against their sides in the rhythmic whisper so familiar to any place which sits aside the sea. We watched the boats float and sway and imagined the cold of the ocean if we were to board one and pull the anchor and sail forward through the granite mouth of the cove and out into the grey black waves of the Gulf of Maine just a hundred or two-hundred yards ahead. No thanks, we said to the gulls who cried for us to join them, instead pointing our toes to the local lobster and burger shack, Barnacle Billy’s.

There’s a cliff walk there called Marginal Way, which begins (or ends) in Perkins Cove and ends (or begins) in the town center of Ogunquit. The name “Oqunquit” aptly means “beautiful place by the sea” in the language of the indigenous Abenaki tribes, who were displaced in the 1620s and on as English settlers moved into Perkins Cove and the surrounding area to establish sawmills and fishing ports and shipbuilding industries. The 1.25 mile hiking path skates the treacherous high cliffs of the coast of Maine. In places, the grade is steep and the wind buffeting, but it’s a mostly-paved path with iron fencing to keep the clumsiest of our party from tumbling away into eternity.

My feet were numb by the halfway mark and I was ready for a fresh pile of french fries at Barnacle Billy’s, but we carried on, pausing briefly to clamber down the slopes to one of the plentiful beaches to select from its multitude of wave-rounded rocks one or two each as a free memento. Later we came across a lighthouse so small that I didn’t even think to take a photo. My daughters hugged it, as they tend to do to any lighthouse within arms’ reach, and then we moved along to give the lighthouse and time to enjoy it to the next group of trekkers. We reached the edge of Ogunquit proper just as the shadows grew longer than the light, turned around, and began the walk back to Perkins Cove.

The sun was gone. The air was chilled. The shops were closed or closing. And we clung to the happiness of family. We warmed ourselves as best we could in the few places still open, a gallery of blown glass trinkets, the aromatic chocolate heat of the candy shop, a few moments of play with borrowed toys from the shelves of the smallest toy store in the world. And then we surrendered to reality and the road home. We bent our creaking skeletons to lower ourselves into the seats of the car. I fired the engine, and glanced as often as the winding ring road would allow in one final loop of the cove.

I had spent the day taking pictures of the people I love with a silly camera on expensive film. As I shot and the camera ejected each frame with its customarily chunky raucousness, I had tucked each chemical square into the pocket of my jacket just over my heart. I didn’t really look at the photos. I didn’t care about their quality. I didn’t examine the shots as they developed, nor remember them during the long drive home down I-95. Not until many days later did I see what I’d made.

And there they were. The pictures. Not perfect, some not even any good. But perfect pictures, nonetheless, of my kids, my wife, and Perkins Cove, a place where we lived together for just a day in a cold Autumn in 2023.

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[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]

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I haven’t gotten my hands on a Polaroid I-2 quite yet. When I have, I’ll write up a comprehensive review. Until then, here’s the pertinent details of Polaroid’s newest camera, and some educated thoughts on the same.

The key features which make the Polaroid I-2 unique in the brand’s lineup are these :

The camera is an entirely new machine, developed in-house at Polaroid. It offers the full suite of user controls, including shutter, aperture, automatic, and full manual control. In addition, it has controls for exposure compensation, auto-focus (using Lidar), a built-in flash, and a fully informative viewfinder with pretty, orange LEDs, a new lens, and a price of $599.

First Impression

The new Polaroid I-2 looks amazing! It’s beautiful. I’m excited to use it and see if the promise of user controls, a nice lens, accurate auto-focus, and that lovely viewfinder add up to what should be (logically) the best Polaroid shooting experience available today.

I’ve reviewed almost every Polaroid camera that’s been released in the last fifty years, including the new, post-rebirth Polaroid cameras. I’ve enjoyed many of them and been frustrated by many others. Typically my frustrations stem from a lack of user controls, the unpredictability of the resulting images, and the cost of shooting Polaroid film when so many of the shots are wasted and useless (often a result of bad film). I’ve written whole articles about these frustrations.

With Polaroid’s new I-2, it seems that some of these frustrations may be assuaged. The added user controls will help. The fact that the camera is new (and not a crusty, old relic from 1980) will help. And that new lens will help.

But there’s a big red flag in Polaroid’s marketing material for their newest, fanciest camera. They’re still leaning into the imperfection angle. They write that the camera is “Made for the Imperfectionists.” That’s code for “Our film is still not great, and no matter what you try and no matter how much money you spend on a new camera, you’ll never make a perfect Polaroid image.”

Okay, fine. I’m not looking for perfection. I’ve written about that, too. I love imperfect photos. The problem, for me, is that Polaroid’s film isn’t just imperfect, it’s often simply poor.

Writing critical takes like these risks alienating the company’s communications team. I don’t want to do that. But I have to tell the truth. And the truth is that I want Polaroid to succeed. I want to love their cameras and film. I want to shoot it weekly, and share those positive experiences with my readers. But the sad reality is that every time I buy an eight pack of Polaroid film for $19, one or two of the photos come out undeveloped, or streaked. Two or three more have weird unforeseen color shifts, or they’re criminally soft, or they’re under-exposed.

It’s possible that this new camera will fix all of that.

But it’s an expensive camera, and I’m not convinced that it can deliver an instant photography experience that’s better than that of Fujifilm’s best Instax machine (besides larger images).

But that’s not the point of this article. We’ll save the full review and comparisons for when I test it. When that happens, you can read all about it here.

Order your Polaroid I-2 from B&H Photo here

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Sitting alone in my office I can think of dozens of examples of people who do the same thing over and over while expecting different results, and these people are as far from the actual definition of insanity as it’s possible to be.

How many rockets exploded on the launch pad before the Saturn V successfully delivered a human being to the surface of the moon?

I think also of a small child strapped into ice skates, feet jittering on a lake of ice, firing slapshot after slapshot toward a gaping net and missing every time. But the child keeps shooting expecting that, eventually, one will go in.

My daughter failing to hold a handstand over and over. The bird watcher who walks the same woods every week in hope of seeing a rare bird that they’ve never seen. Old-timey prospectors, panning for gold.

The whole of life is repeating the same things over and over. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. Doing things over and over and enjoying the unpredictable results is the reason we’re here. There’s nothing “insane” about it.

But I must admit, this week, that the flimsy bon mot around insanity has started to sound a bit more solid for one simple reason. Because I’ve been shooting Polaroid film.

The Three Fs of Polaroid Photography

This week, I discovered my own witticism. That there are three F words that encompass the whole experience of shooting Polaroid film.

The first F is a happy one. Fun!

I load a fresh pack of Polaroid 600 film into my delightfully retro Polaroid Amigo (what a name) and smile down at the small box of ‘80s tech cradled lightly in delicate hands. The expectation that I’m about to make beautiful, unpredictable, experimental (ooh, experimental – I’ve read the word in Polaroid’s press releases!) instant photos is too tantalizing.

I wander around dumbly, my eyes crinkled, the corners of my lips lifted in a slight innocent smile. I can’t wait to take a picture.

This is the fun.

I love my daughters. They’re cute and happy and always oblige me when I ask to take their photo. Today is no different. I place my oldest on a stool by the window, where natural light streams inward upon one side of her face. It’s a basic window light portrait that I’ve shot hundreds of times in the last decade. But it’s pretty.

I frame her in the charmingly vacant viewfinder, nothing more than a square of hollow plastic passing through the camera, and press the shutter release.

The mechanical Polaroid shutter flicks open to capture the light. I hold still, and so does my daughter. She’s well-trained by years of her father using old, slow, rather dumb cameras. The shutter flicks closed, and the whirring gears of the Amigo fire to electric life.

The Polaroid photo is gripped by a metal hook deep within the belly of the camera. It’s drawn forward to the spinning compression rollers and squeezed through, the development chemical raked across the exposed photo material to create the slowly-developing instant photo.

The picture ejects smoothly from the camera, and, miraculously, a photo has been made. I gingerly take it from the camera and place it face down on the table allowing it to develop over the next twenty minutes.

During those twenty minutes I look for more photo opportunities. I shoot a shot of the family dog, now old and whitened, with strange skin growths that the vet assures us are normal and weakening hip joints that slow him down just a little. The photo ejects with the whirring clatter, and it joins its developing predecessor on the table.

A still-life of some sort of grass my wife tells me looks nice. A close-up photo of my second daughter, smiling. A shot of a retro electronic device that I love. A photo of a homemade birthday card featuring the Nintendo character, Kirby.

I’ve shot eight shots in fifteen minutes. I give the photos half a day to develop there, on the table.

When I come back to the photos later that night, the fun is over.

Now it’s time to consider those exploded rockets. Those missed slapshots. The gold a lie. The prospector lying desiccated in a river-less canyon, his only reward the corpse of his pack mule laden with bags of bad luck.

The second F is Failure.

The first shot of my first child is brutally under-exposed. The image is blurry. There’s no sharpness and zero shadow detail. It’s a terrible photo.

The still-life of the decorative grass is exposed well enough, but the entire shot is soft and the framing is way off. The charmingly unsophisticated viewfinder lacks parallax correction for close-up shooting.

The photo of the electronic toy is barely visible. The homemade birthday card is indecipherable. There’s one picture that’s nothing more than a blank, blueish-brown nothing.

The close portrait shot of my second child is also under-exposed. Her beautiful smile is barely visible. There’s an over-bearing green cast dousing the entire image in a sickly hue. It’s like the office sequence of The Matrix, except we don’t have that cool flip phone.

I’m disappointed. In myself. In the camera. In the film. Maybe I didn’t plan enough. Maybe I shouldn’t expect so much from Polaroid film. Maybe I needed more light, or a camera with a flash, or fresher film.

I drive to Target and buy two more packs of film at $21 a pack. Forty-two dollars for sixteen photos.

I load the film into two different cameras. One is another retro camera, the Polaroid 600 One Step. This camera also lacks a flash, but buoyed by quiet self-assurance that if I adjust the exposure compensation dial I’m sure to get better shots, I press on. I load the second pack into the modern Polaroid One Step 2. This new camera has a flash, new circuitry, and has given good results in the past.

I spend the next week shooting instant photos of life. My young daughter’s birthday celebration, the birthday cake, her indoor camping trip in our living room (complete with tent). A winter morning as we make our way to school. Shots of my other interests and projects in vintage electronics and game systems. More pictures of my dog. Photos of fruit.

Throughout the process I become painfully familiar with the third F of Polaroid photography.

The third F is Frustration.

Though I’ve had success shooting Polaroid film and cameras in the past, I’m not sure it’s worth it these days. And that’s what’s frustrating. The uncertainty.

The good Polaroid photo is too elusive. Acquiring it makes no sense. The shots are under-exposed, except when they’re over-exposed. The shots are never sharp. The flash is too flashy, except when it doesn’t fire for some unknown reason. Sometimes the development chemical spreads unevenly, or not at all. Occasionally the camera spontaneously ejects a photo without making it into a photo.

My vast experience with making photographs does not help.

I adjust exposure. Does nothing. I use a flash or don’t use a flash. Doesn’t really matter. I frame the shot with my own estimated parallax compensation. Might as well smash the camera. I shoot outside. I shoot inside. I shoot in a studio with full light kit. I use a tripod. I do everything I can to make it work, and it doesn’t work. At least, it doesn’t work well enough.

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See, the thing is, Fuji makes Instax film and cameras to shoot it. The film works. The cameras work. And I hate to say it, because I truly love Polaroid’s cameras, Polaroid’s history, and that Polaroid film is bigger than Fuji’s, dimensionally.

But Polaroid film never works. At least, not consistently or well enough to justify the cost.

What’s most confounding, though, is that I’ll still buy Polaroid film and I’ll still shoot Polaroid cameras. I can’t stop. I don’t know why.

What was that bon mot, again, about insanity?

This article launched with the headline that Polaroid photography brings with it three Fs. Fun, failure, and frustration, in that order.

But there’s another F word that comes with making Polaroid photos, a fouth F word that I left out of my newly crafted witticism. The fourth F word is, in fact, the one that I mutter most when shooting Polaroid film. But you’ll have to use your imagination, because this particular F word is not fit to print.

You can get your own Polaroid at F Stop Cameras (my shop)

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[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]

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