Polaroid digitises another instant picture camera

Polaroid has just launched a new compact digital instant picture camera, the Z2300. But is this a patch on the original Polaroid cameras of old? We had one in the 1970s. Remember waving the picture around as it developed after it emerged from the camera? The pictures were always a bit disappointing.

Edwin Land produced the first commercially produced instant camera in 1948 and it was marketed through his company, Polaroid, which was then best known for polarised light products, like sunglasses.

I thought the pictures from Kodak's rival instant cameras launched in the early 1980s were much better - until 1986 when Polaroid successfully sued Kodak for copying their idea and Kodak had to withdraw from the market, leaving owners of Kodak instant cameras without even film to buy. Ironically, Kodak was contracted at the time to manufacture Polaroid's instant film stocks, but that arrangement was soon ended.

Polaroid announced in 2008 that it was to end camera and film production but an independent company, amusingly called Impossible, supported by fans of the system bought some of the film manufacturing assets and recently restarted production. Polaroid even said it would make a new camera but this never materialised. So old-fashioned Polaroid film still lives on, sort of.

Polaroid's new Z2300 instant camera appears to be a very simple 10 megapixel camera of cameraphone lineage with a Polaroid Zink instant printer bolted on the back. In fact this is not the first Polaroid digital instant picture camera. You can still buy the 5 megapixel Polaroid 2 camera. Don't expect stunning print quality, but you could at least have a lot of fun with the Z2300 - assuming you have £129 to spare (not including spare Zink paper).