Goodbye Polaroid Film: Physics Labs Say Farewell

[jtbell]

Fans bid farewell to Polaroid film

I've never owned a Polaroid camera myself, but I've used them in introductory physics labs. When I was a grad student, and in my first teaching job, we used them with a strobe lamp to photograph two-dimensional trajectories for projectile motion. Students measured distances directly off the photograph, converted the distances to "real life" by using a ruler included in the photograph, and then calculated velocity and acceleration versus time.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yeah baby, I was a Swinger, were you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7k2uwJmwxo

 

[franznietzsche]

Yeah baby, I was a Swinger, were you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7k2uwJmwxo

I am HORRIFIED.

I wonder if I'm the only one who expects advertisements to last no longer than thirty seconds now. That video felt like an eternity.

As for polaroids, I remember them from when I was a kid. Many pictures of myself and my siblings when we were young were taken with polaroids. And now they have gone the way of the horse and buggy.

 

[hypatia]

Oh no, I love the magic picture coming to view I haven't used my camera for about 2 years, but it was great to take to places, like the zoo. Snap the photo, watch it..then give it to the family or the kids.

 

[Redbelly98]

Yeah baby, I was a Swinger, were you?

I was maybe 5 or 6 when they used to show those ads. I can clearly remember the way they'd sing "It's only nineteen dollars, and ninety-five" as if it was yesterday. But I'd forgotten that it was Polaroid commercials where I heard that.

 

[turbo]

I have used up some Polaroid film in my days in specialty cameras. Microscopy, etc. I loved Kodachrome and had to abandon that many, many years ago.

 

[edward]

This Polaroid ad is also the instruction manual. Try to squeeze the instruction manual of todays cameras into five minutes. The full instruction manual for my cheapo digital camera is available online only. It has 98 pages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOT7SwSgq2U&NR=1

 

[edward]

I am HORRIFIED.

I wonder if I'm the only one who expects advertisements to last no longer than thirty seconds now. That video felt like an eternity.

Back then ad time was a lot cheaper. making it more expensive has given us a 15 to 30 second attention span.

As for polaroids, I remember them from when I was a kid. Many pictures of myself and my siblings when we were young were taken with polaroids. And now they have gone the way of the horse and buggy.

50 years ago they would have been on The History Channels; Modern Marvels.