Polaroid Originals is a Dutch photography company and manufacturer founded in 2008 by Florian Kaps, André Bosman and Marwan Saba. It manufactures its own cameras, the Impossible I-1, the OneStep 2, modelled on the original Polaroid OneStep Land Camera, the I-Type instant film for both original cameras, and instant film for select original Polaroid instant cameras.
From 2008 to September 2017 the company was called Impossible Project (stylized as IM?OSSIBLE) - Polaroid's brand and intellectual property were acquired by Impossible Project's largest shareholder in May 2017.
Video Polaroid Originals
History
The Impossible Project was founded in 2008 after Polaroid announced in February 2008 that it would stop producing film for Polaroid cameras. The founders are Florian Kaps, André Bosman and Marwan Saba. In June 2008, Kaps and Bosman met at the Polaroid factory's closing event and decided to found a company to produce materials for Polaroid cameras. In October 2008, Impossible bought the production machinery from Polaroid for $3.1 million and leased a building, called Building Noord, which was formerly part of the Polaroid plant in Enschede, Netherlands. The company has offices in Vienna, Berlin, New York and Tokyo. It leased the Polaroid production plant and developed new instant film products for use in some existing Polaroid cameras, beginning mass production and sales in 2010. They generated USD270,000 in profit on USD4 million in revenue and sold 500,000+ units.
In January 2012, the company announced that it and Polaroid would launch a range of collectible products, called The Polaroid Classic range, that originate from different periods of Polaroid's history. Between six and ten products will be released each year. In July 2013, Florian Kaps announced his 'retirement' from the project and Creed O'Hanlon took over the role as CEO.
In December 2014, The Impossible Project announced that Oskar Smolokowski would be their new CEO and Creed O'Hanlon would become the Executive Chairman of Impossible's management board.
Impossible has licensed its name to stores in Germany, Spain and London.
In May 2017, Impossible's largest shareholder acquired the brand and intellectual property of the original Polaroid corporation. Impossible Project was renamed Polaroid Originals in September 2017.
Maps Polaroid Originals
Products
Instant film
Polaroid SX-70
Polaroid 600
Polaroid Image/Spectra
Impossible Hardware
8x10 Film
I-Type
Future and other formats
The Impossible Project has stated that they will not manufacture packfilm "in the foreseeable future", due to the investment required, and cannot produce 4x5, Type 100, or Type 80 films, Polaroid 500 film and I-Zone film as they do not have the production machinery. These were disassembled along with the factories that used to produce the film when Polaroid filed for Chapter 11.
Impossible founder Florian Kaps left the company in July 2013 and later founded a coffee house and photo studio in Vienna called SUPERSENSE. Kaps revealed through a series of blog posts and interviews in 2016 that he had personally approached Fuji about acquiring their machinery in an attempt to rescue their soon-to-be discontinued FP3000b and FP100b packfilm products. Kaps was unsuccessful in this pursuit, but motivated by his disappointment in Fuji's decision, he established the Analogue Product Institute (API) with the goal of "developing a NEW generation of analog instant packfilm [and] Establishing a rich network of new suppliers, manufacturers and financiers from all over the world".
Hardware
Instant Lab
In October 2013, the company began sale of the Instant Lab, a new camera-like device that could expose digital images from an iPhone onto analog instant film. It supports the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c and 5s, as well as the iPod Touch.
The device was produced after a successful crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter. It also introduced a new battery-less film cartridge design for use with the Instant Lab, which-unlike vintage Polaroid cameras-is internally powered.
The cartridge itself is a 600-type cartridge stripped of the battery, so that it can use 600-type film.
Customers will have the opportunity to exchange their current Instant Lab cradle for a new one that supports many phone sizes in one.
Instant Lab 2.0
In September 2014, The Impossible Project announced at Photokina that they would release a second generation device.
The biggest, if only, change appears to be that it now supports more than iPhone 4 through 5s as iPod Touch 4 and 5. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be supported along with iPad with Retina Display, the Samsung Galaxy S III through S5, and Galaxy Note II and 3.
Impossible I-1
In 2016, Impossible started manufacturing its own instant camera, the Impossible I-1. It is a part of the company's original I-Type system, which uses its new I-Type film and 600 film. It was designed by Teenage Engineering.
Polaroid OneStep 2 and OneStep 2 Viewfinder
In September 2017, Polaroid Originals announced the Polaroid OneStep 2 instant film camera that uses its I-Type film and 600 film. In the first version of this camera, framing is done by looking through a window on the back of the camera. Later in 2018 the company released a version with a built-in viewfinder that makes framing more accurate, the OneStep 2 Viewfinder.
References
External links
- Official website
Source of article : Wikipedia
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