It’s hard to make some things digital. The Polaroid is a good example of that, because the very nature of a digital Polaroid is a digital camera, and so the return of Polaroid is deliberately old school.
Shown at CES 2018, the return of Polaroid is marked by something rather curious: film.
Specifically, it’s Polaroid’s film, because that’s returning for a new camera, the Polaroid OneStep 2, and if you’ve ever seen a Polaroid camera before — the old bulky press-button, flash, and a print pops out — you’ll know roughly what we’re talking about.
Or even precisely, because the OneStep 2 looks exactly like an old camera, except for a few changes.
One is that there’s no battery for you to replace, and less likelihood that your Polaroid is ever going to go dead, because with 60 days battery life and a microUSB charge connector, the Polaroid OneStep 2 is kind of like digital, except not. Rather, we’d call it electronic, because it still takes pictures on Polaroid film, which is also returning in Polaroid Originals.
The OneStep 2 is therefore deliberately retro, made for a crowd that totally gets the Instagram thing, but doesn’t necessarily want it digital, providing a button, a flash, and a bulky camera just like the old days, but also still a little modern to pass muster.
After giving it a look, it’s hard not to think that not including a digital storage element in there for posting to Instagram kind of misses the mark a little, especially at a show that is all about the digital world, but again, that would probably miss the point Polaroid is trying to make: that some things are just better old school.
Also, given how Polaroid film works, we can’t imagine there would necessarily be an easy way to make this work. Just saying.
Unlike most CES 2018 news, there’s word on Australian availability, with JB HiFi and Camera House stores the likely culprit, and pricing of under $200.
