A Design Battle Between Chip Engineers Led to Polaroid’s SX-70 Camera (1989)

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41 points·sohkamyung··11 comments

I love sharing this Eames promo film for the SX-70:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo_1pyQ7xvc

For anybody interested in this era of photography, the book "A Triumph of Genius" by Ronald K. Fierstein is such a brilliant documentation of the history around the Kodak vs Polaroid patent war.

Thank you for the suggestion!

Even today the sx70 is an impressive bit of engineering. A foldable camera! How cool is that?

A foldable _SLR_ camera.

One of the greatest cameras of all time, seems to be infinitely moddable too. Check out the OpenSX70 project. Unfortunately Polaroid film is a ripoff.

I wish we could 3d print lenses one day. This would be a gamechanger.

> Unfortunately Polaroid film is a ripoff.

It's certainly expensive, but have you seen what it takes to produce photographic film, let alone instant film? My guess is that there isn't much of a profit margin for them, even at over $2 per photo. Another thing: adjusted for inflation, SX-70 film is actually slightly cheaper now than it was in the 70s and 80s, despite the massive drop in market size.

> I wish we could 3d print lenses.

We can today:

https://formlabs.com/blog/creating-camera-lenses-with-stereo...

These lenses are awful and still need sanding.

So is literally every lens made by literally every other manufacturing method. Glass lenses look pretty awful before they're ground also.

Why in the world would you need to 3d print a lens and what would it change?

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