LOS ANGELES — The Polaroid is dead. Long live the Polaroid. They used to be a staple at any gathering, and then one day, they weren’t. Those tangible remembrances of fine times had soon turned into cell phone camera snaps and then Facebook and Flickr albums. And now they’re Instagram pictures.
Instaprint installs on a wall and displays the hashtag or geotag you want to automatically print. Image via http://instaprint.me.
Enter Instaprint, a new Kickstarter project which aims to bring back something like the Polaroid, with a physical document of your photos.
Instaprint is a location based photo booth that can transform parties and events by putting a camera in everyone’s hand. By setting Instaprint to look out for specific locations or hashtags, any Instagram tagged appropriately will automatically be printed out on inkless paper. Get one for your next party, event, wedding, fiesta or anything you like.
Unlike Instagram, which is free, Instaprint has a hefty starting price of $399. Which is why Breakfast studio is aiming to raise $500,000 on Kickstarter to launch the product. They also have a live feed of an actual Instaprint that will take your photos and print them, showing just how easy it is once it’s set up.
I could see this being most fun when implemented at a gallery opening or afterparty. On weekends, I’m already transported to a half dozen parties around the world thanks to Instagram. It’s great to see a product that makes photos local again and gives us something tangible to take away.
So far, the Instaprint Kickstarter project has raised $155,000 of its $500,000 goal with 39 days to go. You can see this project, along with others on Hyperallergic’s Kickstarter page.
From article before, 1000memories writes, “Every 2 minutes today we snap as many photos as the whole of humanity took in the 1800s.” Now we can instantly print them all…
Unfortunately, it looks like an inkjet/dye sub print of a digital photo processed by instagram – not saying it’s without charm, but the invocation of polaroid prints (which have a specific artifact-ness due to the unique exposure processing and the negative-less image capture) is superficial and will likely lead to disappointment — why not compare it to the self-serve photo printing kiosks at CVS/Walgreens/Rite Aid?