LAS VEGAS -- Almost a year ago, Polaroid killed its iconic instant cameras when it stopped the production of the shake'n'develop film that fed it. It stumbled on with a range of mediocre digital point and shoots and the PoGo printer, which churned out crappy little pictures on the go.
Now, at CES 2009, that printer has been shoehorned into a camera, finally bringing the Polaroid proper to the digital age. You load the PoGo up with ten-packs of 3x2 "Zink" (Zero Ink) paper, which has heat-activated dye inside the paper itself. When you take a shot (or load up an SD card from another camera), you can choose the image and print. The camera heats the paper and in about a minute the picture slides, dry to the touch, from a slot in the side.
Sadly, it is also fully "developed", which means no shaking (even though that never worked anyway). As you'd expect, having a printer inside makes it a bit chunky, but not too much so. The camera side of things is basic -- a fixed focus lens, an unspecified sensor size
(seriously) and almost nothing else.
The picture below shows the film inside, and the picture below that is my rather hungover-looking mug, taken today on the PoGo (those red eyes are actually a pretty good likeness). The lighting is terrible, but the image quality is pretty poor anyway. There's no way this will usurp its iconic predecessor.
The camera will be on sale in March for $200, plus around 35 cents a pop for pictures. These come in packs of 20, 50 or 80.
Press release [Polaroid]
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