Hands on: Polaroid Two review

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Hands on: Polaroid Two review

Postby Mikethehack » Sun Aug 02, 2009 4:48 pm

All the fun of Polaroid in a brick-like box

We'll be the first to admit that the idea of seeing Polaroid technology within a 5MP camera kind of excited us.

Unless you are extremely passionate about photography, most of the pictures you take on a digicam will gather digital dust on you hard drive, only getting the occasional airing on photo sites like Flickr or even Facebook.

So, when the Polaroid Two arrived at TechRadar towers, we got it out of its box faster than a child unwrapping his Christmas presents, only to find the camera had been replaced with a massive brick. Then we realised the massive brick was actually the camera.

Maybe we've been blessed with the deluge of super skinny digicams to enter the market in recent years, but the Polaroid Two is an unwieldy beast of a camera. It's a massive 35mm in width, which makes it one of the chunkiest cameras around, even when compared to the chassis of a DSLR.
But as we all know, you shouldn't judge a camera by its cover, as it's inside that counts.

Luckily, in the Polaroid Two, you have yourself a mini photo developing lab. Flick open the back switch and there's an area to put in the photo-sensitive paper, which comes in 2-inch x 3-inch size.

Once the paper is in – and don't squander it as the cost is around £8 for 30 sheets – press the On button for a few seconds and you are ready for some instant photo gratification.
Features on the camera are minimal, but you do get a 4x digital zoom (ooh, blocky), a number of scene modes (Fireworks, Candlelight, Pets etc) and even a Video Recording mode. You can even sort out the size of the images and quality. There are options for Sharpness, Saturation, White Balance and ISO but they are greyed out – presumably these can't be changed manually.

Taking images with the camera is as simple as pointing and shooting. There's no viewfinder, so all your lining up has to be done via the 3.0-inch LCD screen. This is no bad thing, and anyone familiar with taking photos with a digicam will not run into any problems.

An SD card slot is include and a little bit of internal memory is provided, but this is only good for five shots.

As you can create your own images, within the camera, there's also some in-camera tweaking that can be done. You can crop and image, sort out the red eye, give the printout a border if you desire and choose how many prints you want the camera to take.

The actual printing of the images is the best thing about the Polaroid Two. Watching a photograph pop out 40 seconds after you taken the image is all good fun – okay, it feels a bit like Polaroid has re-invented its own wheel yet again but the novelty is still there.

The camera uses Zink's 'zero ink' technology, so you can pretty much put your grubby fingers all over the photo the second the camera releases it

The images themselves, however, were a tad grainy for our liking – especially as they are only 2x3 inches in size. Don't expect a huge amount of detail to come out of the shots you take.

Each photograph has a sticky back, so it's plain to see where Polaroid is marketing this camera – at kids and social snappers. This is definitely not a camera for those who know the 'rule of thirds'.

At £229, Polaroid is asking a lot of money for not much in return. Yes, there's a certain charm to the camera, but that wears off quite quickly once you've taken a round of shots with it (and forked out 8 quid for the paper).

And with the battery life as low as it is, you will only be able to squeeze around 15 pictures out of the machine before it dies on you.

If Polaroid decided to cut the size of its camera in half for the next iteration, so it doesn't feel like we are lugging round an old Sony Walkman tape machine, then it might have a gadget worth putting on your 'festival must-have' list, but as it is, we would have to file the Polaroid Two under 'must try harder'.


http://www.techradar.com/news/photograp ... iew-602957

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I'm not really a proper reporter, due to the chronic lack of discipline, negligible attention span, and a certain juvenile difficulty taking serious things seriously.
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