Brace yourself for, what to most of us, is a blast from the past. Polaroid photography is making its comeback! For quite some time, film seemed to be cropped out of the picture, but now a new generation of photographers and enthusiasts are inviting back the old school film with open arms.

It’s easy to see why. Generations that have been brought up with digital cameras are seeking uniqueness. Film provides a larger variety of options to play and experiment with. Prints from film have stronger and a more pure quality, compared to pictures that are edited digitally. Digital prints tend to lose quality and abandon pixels. In an age where everything is available straight away and waiting isn’t treasured, instant film cameras, such as Polaroid, can produce sought after retro style prints at the click of a button.

The Polaroid Z2300 Instant camera is a great example of popular vintage photography has become recently. This little instant camera lets you take pictures, edit them and add filters as well as print them there and there to share with your friends! All the pictures are also saved onto a SD card, so you can reprint as many copies as you like.

If you prefer to use your Apple or Android phones there are hundreds of apps available such as Instagram, allowing everyone to not only edit personal photos, but also share their snaps to the entire Instagram community—with further options to post straight to social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Hipstamatic is an app that gives pictures an old and weathered look. It also imitates a SLR by giving users a huge variety of different lenses and flashes to choose from. Not too long ago, photos that were damaged, faded, and distorted like ‘Hipstamatic’ prints were chucked straight in the rubbish.

Many of the imperfections that everyone once tried to avoid are now in hot demand. Photoshop was created to remove all these visual flaws, but coincidently this is what younger generations see as interesting and cool.  Film is being re-designed to suit people of all ages and photography needs.

Polaroid is even due to release an 18-mega-pixel camera with a interchangeable lens, designed for Android smartphones. It doesn’t matter whether it’s original film or digital one that floats your boat because it’s all readily available with the latest camera technology. 

Featured images:

•  License: Creative Commons image source 

Sam is an amateur photographer and a journalist who is passionate about photography and gadgets. He is still searching for that perfect shot.