True to its heritage of making instant memories, the American company recently came up with Polaroid Lab, which brings out the photos in your phone bank into the real world instantly.
“Unlimited cloud storage can actually be your memories’ worst enemy, causing your digital photos to skyrocket in numbers and end up falling into a void of oblivion," says Polaroid BV CEO Oskar Smolokowski.
To address this problem, the 82-year-old American company introduced Polaroid Lab, a new instant camera product that turns digital into analog, was released in the country. The three-lens developing system functions as a miniature table top darkroom, transforming smartphone photos into their signature-style photos. By doing so, Smolokowski says that this will dec-lutter your phones of your photos, "bringing them into the world as something you can hold in your hand and store on the fridge door rather than in the cloud."
Users select an image from their smartphone via the Polaroid Originals app, before placing their phone facing downward on the platform. When the red button is pressed, the picture is projected onto the film and then, using a combination of mirrors, light, and chemistry, it is recast as an instant photo that ejects from the Polaroid Lab. After development, the digital image is now a fully-fledged Polaroid.
The Polaroid Originals app lets you experiment with image collages and augmented reality features - giving you unprecedented creative control over your pictures before turning them into Polaroid pictures.
Polaroid Lab will be available in selected Bratpack stores and The Travel Club Trinoma for PHP 8,890. For more information, follow Polaroid Originals on Facebook.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
BERLIN -- For many consumers, rewinding cassettes, carefully placing a needle on a record or shaking dry a Polaroid photo may all feel like long-forgotten gestures from a bygone era.
But they're everywhere to be seen again at Berlin's IFA tech show, albeit it with an unmistakable digital touch.
The "new trends" section of the fair, which often showcases upcoming Christmas-season blockbusters, is dominated by a stand belonging to Polaroid, the household-name camera firm that not so long ago appeared near death.
Known as the One Step+, the snapper looks exactly like a traditional Polaroid from the outside -- but offers Bluetooth connectivity to sync up with Android and iPhone apps.
Competitor Kodak also has an instant camera, the Printomatic, on offer, claiming less than 40 seconds to develop a photo in color or black-and-white.
"For the new generation, it's totally new. They have no idea how to take a picture like this, without a screen, or to wait a week for it to get developed", said Polaroid spokesman Tobias Henze.
Unlike digital photos trapped under smartphone glass, "you can frame it, put it on the wall, offer it or put it in a scrapbook," he points out.
AUDIOSTALGIA
In the music world, audio purists and those looking for a more "instagrammable" way to listen are met with ever more options for playing cassettes and vinyl records.
Manufacturers have hard data to back up their turn to the past, with 33 RPM discs accounting for some 14 percent of US album sales in 2017, compared with 11 percent the previous year.
That's why IFA visitors can lust after Yamaha's Vinyl 500 turntable, which nods to modernity with a Wifi connection that also allows users to stream music.
Meanwhile, a slew of startups offer portable turntables that can be lugged around in a satchel or even clipped onto the edge of a speaker or a shelf.
For those with enormous digital collections, Sony vaunts the ability of its DMP-Z1 player -- priced at $13,000 -- to restore the sound quality and audio "grain" of a vinyl pressing.
Debate may rage forever in the audiophile world about whether the traditional discs truly offer superior sound.
But the trend towards the black record is firmly established across Europe, with small-scale publishers popping up in disused factory buildings across the continent.
Outside the air-conditioned halls of the IFA, hip young Berliners are spoiled for choice among shops offering vinyls and cassettes.
"Old formats, in audio, video, photo negatives or records have a very large user base, almost 50 percent of the market," says Klaus Boehm, of consultancy Deloitte.
"Our multimedia use will coexist in the coming years with these older formats, and I'd advise people not to throw away their old devices," he cautioned.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
