Big Shot
13 January 2010
Someone commented the picture of Tom from Noah And The Whale looked like a 70′s or 80′s school photo. That’s because it was taken with a Polaroid camera called a Big Shot. The Big Shot is quite famous for having been used by Andy Warhol as the basis for many of his large screen prints.
Debbie Harry By Warhol on Big Shot
Jean-Michel Basquiat by Warhol and Bigshot
News, afew years ago, that Polaroid film was about to be discontinued created huge ripples in the photography community. Polaroid film would disappear forever. Nora has been collecting as much polaroid film as possible in the meantime. Also trying to buy up old magicubes (the cube flashes from early cameras). There are many types of polaroid. Not just the normal one with the thick white border at the bottom. The Bigshot uses a certain type called 669. It’s is almost impossible to buy this film now. The polaroid factory closed its doors in June 2008.
As a result polaroid cameras flooded onto ebay. You can buy them for a dollar. Nora has bought quite afew so far. They all take different pitures. Some use super rare polaroid film, some just the regular.
It seems, though, Nora was not alone in her sadness at the loss of this classsic medium. A man from Holland felt so strongly, he set about starting the brand up again, buying the factory, finding the techniques, the recipes and bringing the polaroid back from the dead. Everyone thought he was mental to undertake such a task. With this in mind he called his quest The Impossible Project.
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hi.
this is funny you should post this stuff today…
i recently bought my first polaroid camera after a long, loooong obsession with polaroid photos. now i am hunting for appropriate film… interesting websites out there…
wish me luck, tomorrow i’m ordering the film and hopefully will be using the camera soon.
viele grüsse,
S.
but i heard polaroid pics faints with the years until the pics disappears? because of the chemicals?
FH said… “Myth. I have polaroids from 20 years ago that look the same as the day they were taken”
my father took the first pictures of me with a polaroid the day i was born and they still look new. that’s 25 years…
Miss Polaroid already! Although the film was way too expensive in my opinion..
the impossible project has inspired poloroid to rerelease their classic camera: http://www.polapremium.com/news?date=2009-10-13
they’re also releasing a new camera this year: http://hypebeast.com/2010/01/polaroid-instant-film-cameras-relaunched/
after reading this i took a closer look into the depths of my cupboard and here’s what i found: http://i45.tinypic.com/sqh2k9.jpg
my grandma gave this one to me, must have been in the early 90s. good times! would be fun to get a film for it again, hmmm. i remember it was 10 pics only^^
I remember we had the Supercolor 635CL back in the beginning of the 90′s and you had to think twice every shot because the films were so bloody expensive then!
Not as todays digital cameras where you can just delete the bad shots. cool…
Fuji has a similar instant film that will work with most Polaroid cameras, however it’s not the same. There’s also a digital application called Poladroid where it will make any photo on your computer look like a Polaroid.
It’s a shame how much digital photography has made film photography die a slow death.
Fran, have you or Nora ever tried doing Polaroid transfers? Those are a lot of fun and look rather cool.
FH SAID “Yes we tried the fuji but like you pointed out, it’s not the same. Yes we did polaroid transfers too. Tick. Tick”
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by jamesbressi and Fran Healy, Anabel. Anabel said: RT @franhealy: Fiddling with my blog post: Big Shot ( http://www.franhealy.com/2010/01/big-shot/ ) [...]
I remember goofing around with a polaroid camera in the 90s. Very crazy stuff…
Interestingly enough, I just read that pop star Lady Gaga is the new creative director for “new and special products” for Polaroid, and she is going to work with the company to find a way to combine the iconic Polaroid instant film cameras with the digital age. What I’m hoping is that they’ll end up releasing a digital camera that has the option of printing instantly from the camera itself, just like the old Polaroid cameras. I think that would be AWESOME.
In the meantime, there’s a program you can use to give your digital photos a Polaroid-like look. I can’t remember what it’s called, but it works well.
Great! My sister is photograph and usually uses Polaroid.)
See this Fran. http://www.poladroid.net/
Their software create polaroid-like pictures from digital photos.
Or try this one for free http://www.manuelbarzi.com/pola/
Have you tried the new Polaroid Pogo? I’m considering buying one but I think it is not as interesting as a ‘real’ and ‘old’ polaroid camera.
Hi Fran,
If you like polaroid, you should try this little thing which create polaroid-like pictures: http://www.poladroid.net/download.html
This is a really cool application for Mac.
Enjoy it!
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