What Is a Polaroid? Polaroid Meaning and How Instant Photos Work

Most of the time, a Polaroid is an instant photo: the print with the thick white border that comes out of the camera and develops in your hand. Polaroid is a trademark, and Dictionary.com defines it as the first brand of instant camera, developed by Edwin H. Land and sold since 1948.

Polaroid became so closely tied to instant photos that the name turned into a genericized trademark. That is why lowercase "polaroid" now gets used for instant photos and instant cameras in general, not only ones made by Polaroid.

The word is older than the camera, though. Land's polarizing plastic sheet came first, and he founded Polaroid in 1937 to sell it. So depending on context, "polaroid" can mean any of these:

• The photo or the camera: a self-developing instant print, or the instant camera that makes it.
• The brand: Polaroid, the company. The original corporation stopped making instant film in 2008; today's Polaroid grew out of The Impossible Project, which became Polaroid Originals in 2017 and simply Polaroid in 2020.
• The plastic: a synthetic sheet used as a polarizer or polarizing filter. In the plural, "polaroids" can also mean sunglasses with lenses made from it.
• The modeling term: "polaroids" (also called digitals) are plain photos with no editing, styling, makeup or filters that agencies ask models for. The fashion industry long relied on Polaroid prints as a record of models, and agencies still use the old name for these shots.

Each Polaroid frame is a sealed packet of chemistry. Polaroid says its film has 12 layers, each thinner than a human hair, and color film includes three light-sensitive silver halide layers that respond to blue, green and red light. The thick bottom border of every frame holds a pod of developer paste.

When you press the shutter, light from the lens bounces off a fixed mirror onto the film. The mirror is there because Polaroid film develops as a mirror image. Fujifilm's Instax film develops a normal image, so Instax cameras don't need one.

As the print ejects, rollers burst the paste pod and spread a blue paste across the picture, which both develops the image and shields it from light. The trick is Land's opacifier: it darkens as the print comes out, protecting the image while it forms, then turns clear to reveal the photo. The UK's National Science and Media Museum counts about fifty chemical reactions, each in sequence and precisely timed, before you hold a finished print.

Polaroid introduced this all-in-one integral film in 1972. It develops and fixes the photo with no help from the photographer. Before that, Polaroid prints had to be peeled away from a negative backing after the wait.

Plan on 10 to 15 minutes. That is what Polaroid lists for every one of its color films, and its black-and-white i-Type takes 5 to 10 minutes. A faint image usually shows up within the first minute, but colors and contrast keep building well after that.

Sources disagree a little here. ScienceABC puts black-and-white at about 5 to 7 minutes, while Polaroid's own product page says 5 to 10. Analogue Wonderland says the process takes around 60 seconds, and EverPresent says you can view a photo 60 seconds after taking it. That fits the first faint image, not Polaroid's numbers for a finished print on today's film. A minute was right for Land's first camera, the 1948 Model 95, which made sepia prints in about that time.

Don't shake it. Polaroid says shaking can ruin the chemistry of a developing picture, and back in 2004 the company warned that rapid movement can make parts of the film separate too early or leave blobs. Shaking once helped older prints dry; modern Polaroid film dries behind a clear plastic window.

Polaroid sells four film types for its cameras (i-Type, 600, SX-70 and Go), plus 8x10 sheet film for large format cameras. i-Type, 600 and SX-70 all make the classic 4.2 x 3.5 inch print with a 3.1 x 3.0 inch picture. They differ in speed (SX-70 film is ASA 160, so Polaroid says to shoot it in lots of natural light) and in whether a battery is built into the pack: vintage 600 and SX-70 cameras have no battery of their own and draw power from the film, which is why i-Type film won't work in them.

Go film is the small format: Polaroid calls it four times smaller than the classic i-Type format (the picture is 47 x 46 mm against 79 x 77 mm), and it fits only the Polaroid Go. Every pack holds 8 photos except the Go double pack (16) and 8x10 (10 sheets). Buying in bulk helps a little: color i-Type drops from $18.99 to $17.00 a pack when you buy five.

Which pack fits which camera, including what happens if you load the wrong one, is covered in our Polaroid film guide.

SX-70

A Polaroid camera is an instant camera: it uses self-developing film to produce a chemically developed print shortly after you take the picture. Strictly speaking it is a camera made by Polaroid, but people use the name for instant cameras from other brands too.

Polaroid's current lineup runs from the Go, which Polaroid calls the world's smallest instant analog camera, to the I-2, the only current model that also takes SX-70 film. Vintage models such as the 600 series and the folding Polaroid SX-70 still work with new film, and refurbishers sell them restored.

To choose between current models, see Polaroid Go vs Polaroid Now, our Polaroid I-2 page for the top of the range, and Best Instant Cameras if you are open to Fujifilm's Instax models as well.

Not technically. Instax is Fujifilm's instant system, introduced in 1998, and its film is a different size, so it doesn't fit Polaroid cameras. People still call Instax prints polaroids because the brand name became the everyday word for any instant photo.

The practical differences: an Instax Mini print is smaller and comes 10 to a pack, and because Instax film develops a normal, non-mirrored image, the cameras skip the internal mirror that Polaroid cameras need. The full breakdown is in Polaroid vs Instax.

Edwin Land founded Polaroid in 1937 to sell his polarizing plastic. The camera came from a family photo: Land took a picture of his three-year-old daughter, Jennifer, and she asked why she couldn't see it right away.

Polaroid's own newsroom dates the Land Camera to 1947, the year Land first showed it in public. The first one actually went on sale in November 1948: the Model 95, at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston.

Yes, and the damage can't be undone. Ultraviolet light breaks down the emulsion in instant film, and Getty Museum photography conservator Sarah Freeman told NPR in 2017: "You can't change fading. Fading is permanent." Her advice is to keep Polaroids somewhere cool, dry and dark, which also means not displaying them in direct sun.

Legacybox, a digitizing company, adds a few practical rules: don't cut the white border, store prints flat, hold them by the border, and use acid-free sleeves or boxes.

Unused film ages too: Polaroid says to shoot it within 12 months of the production date on the box. Shelf life and fridge storage are covered in Does Polaroid film expire?

No. A Polaroid camera exposes the film and that is all: the print is the only copy. Polaroid describes its Now Generation 3 as an easy-to-use, completely analog camera, and the same goes for the vintage models.

To get a digital file, scan the print. Polaroid's app has a scan and share feature for exactly this.

If you want a print and a file from the same shot, look at a hybrid. Fujifilm's Instax Mini Evo prints instant photos and can save the printed pictures to your smartphone.