Hello Polaroid Fans!

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Hello everyone who is reading this blog! My name is Gary, and I am the founder of Mint Camera. 2019 marks the tenth year of the founding of this company, and I am writing this blog to share with you what I learnt in the past 10 years working in the industry. So that anybody who is reading this blog may benefit from the knowledge I accumulated from years of working on instant cameras. Together with my team, we will reveal secrets of making and fixing cameras, and tips for using and choosing the right camera.

Why Polaroid SX-70?

40 years after its inception, SX-70 still remains the best Polaroid camera using today’s standards. (Not counting the SLR670, which was built on top of the SX-70.) That’s an incredible achievement. Plenty of instant cameras have been introduced after the SX-70, and none exceeds it. It is simply astonishing. Owning an SX-70 is like owning a piece of history. Its design, functionality, ergonomics, and optics exceed any other camera out there by an order of magnitude. That is why we love it so much.

Here’s a beautiful ad created by the Eames agency for Polaroid™ in the 70’s:

What makes MiNT extraordinary

I love my company. It is part archaeology, part engineering, part photography, part science, part art, part business. I get to meet amazing customers, I get to design extraordinary products, I get to do creative work. I get to work with incredible people, and I get to learn something new every day. It is wonderful.

Will instant photography change the way you live your life like the smartphone did? Probably not. But it will change the way you look at the world. You will see things differently after experiencing instant photography. You won’t forget the experience.

What’s more, we are preventing tens of thousands of SX-70s from ending up in landfills. Not only are we giving these cameras a new life, we are upgrading them and assigning a new owner to them. And what makes this all possible is because Edwin Land built the SX-70 to last for decades. The Polaroid SX-70 is truly an engineering masterpiece.

Disclaimer: We are not Polaroid™. Polaroid™ is a separate company. We maintain a friendly relationship with Polaroid™, which I will explain later.

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8 comments

  • Godfrey DiGiorgi
    April 22, 2019 at 10:43 pm

    Hi Gary!

    I’ve been an enthusiastic user of Polaroid SX-70 cameras and films since the 1970s. I’m so glad you created MiNT Camera and are helping to keep this technology alive, and I’m so glad that a couple of people had the foresight and gumption to resurrect the film production process too! Without both of these efforts, this kind of photography would surely have ceased to exist. And the world would be a poorer place for that loss.

    Thank you for all the good efforts you bring to bear in making these cameras stay alive!

    G

    Reply
  • Godfrey DiGiorgi
    May 15, 2019 at 11:42 pm

    Hi Gary,

    Guest bloggers is an excellent idea! There are plenty of folks who are both good instant film photographers and decent writers who could contribute. It’s very hard to keep to a schedule of blog posts when you are already over busy running your business. I know this from personal experience…!

    BTW: I had both an SLR670a and the RF70 with me for my annual outing with friends this past weekend. Both cameras proved to work flawlessly, with 100% keepers! Of course, for the snapshot purposes of the event, a few print processing flaws aren’t a problem. These were all scanned with an iPhone 8 Plus and cropped/rectilinearly corrected with the Impossible app’s scanning tool:
    https://flickr.com/photos/23913128@N02/sets/72157708597142624

    Enjoy!
    G

    Reply

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