![]() ![]() This was a lot of money, and most households weren’t splurging on Polaroid’s specialized camera. When new in 1972, the folding SX-70 cost $180. ![]() The folding SX-70 was (and remains) a marvel of engineering, a timeless product design, and a legendary camera. The impact of the folding SX-70 can’t be overstated – Polaroid sold 700,000 units in the first eighteen months of production, and photographers from Ansel Adams to Andy Warhol have praised the machine. In 1972, Polaroid made history by producing the Polaroid SX-70, an SLR instant film camera that could take five instant photographs in ten seconds and fold down to fit inside a suit jacket pocket (famously demonstrated by Polaroid founder Edwin Land in front of a live audience). Despite being just another box Polaroid, The Button is everything that a vintage instant camera should be. And finally, the more I shoot it the more I realize that The Button is all the instant camera that most of us will ever need. To start, it takes great photos (I really didn’t expect that). I’ve spent a couple of days shooting one of these somewhat anonymous cameras, a model from 1981 which Polaroid named The Button, and it has surprised me in a number of ways. And my opinion on these ubiquitous and bland Polaroids has long been that they’re… okay, but not really worth using when there are better (ie., more capable) instant cameras on the market. Most of these similar models were actually identical in specification, they simply differed from each other in name, colorway, or the marketing material that surrounded them. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, especially, the local-to-me brand from Cambridge, MA produced over 40 models for the average non-professional photographer. There’s no shortage of Polaroid instant cameras from the pre-bankruptcy era.
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