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Polaroid rageWhat was once considered dead tech has suddenly become all the rage, writes Ewen Bell.

POLAROIDS: RRP: $199.95–$369.95

REVIEWS PRINTER REVIEWS POLAROID GL10

Polaroid GL10Don’t let the Lady Gaga design fool you, this is a nifty little printer that saves the mos impressive features for the technology inside…

“The GL10 is designed to spend most of it’s life off the grid – it’s truly portable”

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN YOU want to give someone a real photo, instead of just posting it on Facebook. At the end of a photo shoot, you may

want to hand your client a little momento of the day. Perhaps your grandma would appreciate a few baby photos to keep in her wallet. A friendly face while travelling in Nepal can be rewarded with a copy to take home.

Bringing the digital world back into the real world is how we make a photo into something tangible. What makes the Polaroid GL10 different to most other photo-quality printers is real convenience.

Polaroid have decided that small is good. The GL10 is superbly compact, in part due to the inkless printing technology within. Unlike an inkjet printer or colour laser, there are no consumables other than the paper itself. The special Zink paper sheets contain all the dyes, but are themselves just 3x4 inches in size. Small is good, if you want to slip a print into your wallet.

The printer is about a third the size of a netbook, making it easy to pack away in your kit or camera bag, and it runs nicely without mains power. You can expect up to 40 prints on a single charge. The GL10 is designed to spend most of it’s life off the grid, truly portable and designed for life on the road. It’s solidly built with no fragile bits hanging off the sides.

Even if you don’t want a photo printer to take on holiday

with you, the GL10 is nice to have around the studio. Taking up much less space than

an inkjet printer, you can pull it out of

the draw when you need to rattle off a print.

Volume is the key for Polaroid’s GL10. Inkjets are cheaper, faster and

SMARTPHONE PRINTINGJust pick a photo on your phone and select the GL10 as your Bluetooth destination .

offer better print quality but they are overkill if you just want the occasional snap in your wallet. If you like small, then you’ll like the GL10.

Connectivity is where the GL10 makes itself really useful. It’s not merely a printer to attach to your computer, but supports Pictbridge printing direct from your camera. Polaroid took this a step further and added Bluetooth to the GL10, so now it becomes an instant print option for your smartphone. There is a dedicated App for Android phones, but you don’t need to go to that much trouble. Just pick a photo, send to Bluetooth and select the GL10 as your Bluetooth destination.

Android, Blackberry and Windows smartphones all play nicely with the GL10, but iPhone users miss

out on the fun. You can imagine sharing prints at a party, with all your friends snapping away on their phones and sending the most embarrassing shots to the GL10. Everyone except your iPhone buddies who will be tweeting their disappointment.

The GL10 delivers acceptable print quality but not exceptional. Prints have a soft focus look to them and the colours can get a little askew at times. Deeply saturated colours peak out very easily and sometimes we saw waves in colour tones where the paper curves. When printing to the edges, you can also expect a little density darkening up against the border.

These are all acceptable variations on quality, given that you’re printing wallet keepsakes, not archival quality exhibition prints.

In many ways the print quality is reminiscent of the original Polaroid film, with slightly dodgy colour tones and some unexpected handling of rich hues. When printing B+W photos, you don’t get pure grey tones, with red and yellow hues creeping across the print. It adds character, whether that’s what you were shooting for or not.

If you plan to print off your desktop, Polaroid provides a host of pre-print options. You can revert

TRAVEL BUDDY If you love travel photography, then the GL10 could be your new best friend. Imagine taking photos of happy faces in a remote Nepalese village and then being able to give back a print on the spot. Pictbridge support on most cameras lets you review a JPEG on camera and send the image directly to your GL10 for an instant print.

WHAT WE THOUGHTLove it:

✓ Ultra portable and works anywhere

✓ Simple to operate and reliable in operation

Like it:

✓ Print quality is good but not great

✓ Connects directly to almost any camera, PC or smartphone

Loathe it:

✗ Bluetooth is not supported for iPhone

✗ No charge indicator when plugging into AC

back to the classic Polaroid border or add a little kitsch factor with their creative tools. Mac and Windows get full support on the desktop – but, really, the big market for this ultra-compact photo printer is getting a print off your smartphone. Digital photography need not be limited to Twitpic and Facebook.

Polaroid have made a lifestyle device more than a printer with the GL10. It takes up no space in your home or office and connects to anything short of an iPhone, spitting out cute little prints whenever you need them. The Zink paper technology stores on the shelf for years and costs around $30 for 30 sheets. It’s not cheap per print, but it’s very efficient if you’d rather not have an inkjet sitting on your desk doing nothing 99% of the time.

Buying advice“Inkjets are cheaper, faster and offer better

print quality but they are overkill if you just want the occasional snap in your wallet.”

COST VS CONVENIENCE$30 for 30 sheets isn’t cheap. But what you lose in cost-efficiency you more than make back in portability and convenience.

SIZE MATTERSPictured next to a standard Compact Flash card for scale, the GL10 is the perfect travel companion.

Print Technology: Zink 3”x4” Paper

Print Speed: 50 seconds per photo

Battery: Built-in Lithium-ion Rechargeable can deliver 40 prints per charge

Connectivity: USB2.0 with standard cable with Pictbridge support

Smartphones: Bluetooth 2.1 supporting all platforms except the iPhone

Price: $199.95

Dimensions: 15 x 11.4 x 3cm

Weight: 425g

DETAILS

8/10 RATING

VERDICT

A photo printer that is doubly useful for it’s unmatched portability and flexible connectivity. Lack of support for iPhones is a little unusual, but if you believe small is good then the GL10 is great.

LADY GAGA GREYThe Polaroid GL10 was designed with the help of Lady Gaga, and quite clearly the Polaroid Z340 (see over page) was not. GL stands for Grey Label, denoting what Polaroid hopes will be a growing range of functional but funky tech gear.

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CASTING COLOURS We tested the Zink technology on some B+W prints to get a baseline on colour variation. Additional hues of red and yellow did creep into the final print, confirming our impression that print quality is more fun than faithful. See our review of the Polaroid GL10 on the previous

spread for a more detailed discussion of print quality in the Zink engine.

REVIEWS CAMERA/PRINTER REVIEWS POLAROID Z340

Polaroid Z340A familiar icon returns, dragging the printed photo back into the digital world.

YOU CAN’T HELP BUT GET EXCITED when you open up the box and see that familiar

little logo. The brand evokes such deep connections with photographic adventure and a time when cameras were pure fun. It’s doubly so for professionals who agonise over the merits of one lens compared to another and when to upgrade their body in the pursuit of better pixels. The Polaroid logo is a world removed from all that; it’s a symbol for fun in a box.

The contemporary version of fun offered by Polaroid is the Z340, and it’s basically a digital camera with self-contained digital printer. Polaroid have adopted the Zink technology to make printing clean and chemical free, using special Zink paper that requires no ink, toner or other additives. The special 3x4-inch paper goes into the back, and the printer module beams the image onto the surface to produce a full-colour output.

Well, sort of full-colour. The tonal range is a little flat and blacks are not as black as you might like, but this is a very tidy printing technology free of wet chemicals. This device is limited to the 3x4-inch paper size – which is a little small, but very cute. You can snap a photo, print off a copy and stick it inside your wallet.

You don’t buy a Polaroid for the image quality, you buy it for the image enjoyment.

GOOD ZINKINGZink technology makes printing clean and chemical free, using special Zink paper that requires no ink, toner or other additives.

Camera or Printer?Sydney food photographer and blogger Billy Law had one thing to say about the Z340: “It’s not a camera. It’s a printer.” That’s a bit harsh, but he’s not far off the mark. This is not going to be a replacement for your DSLR, and carrying around a camera that prints makes it a bit chunky up against the multitude of truly compact cameras on the market. As a printer, it’s very cool; as a camera, it could be better.

From the front it looks every inch a classy Polaroid, but from the top the digital interface is more similar to an early Kodak digital compact. A touchscreen would do away with the patchwork of buttons and make the user interface more user friendly. Even finding the power button is needlessly difficult. I’ll look forward to future development on the camera, as a big button to shoot and a little button to print is probably all this camera really needs.

The autofocus sounds like it was adapted from a discarded East-German tractor as it wanders through the range. The live preview on screen doesn’t give a good indication of whether the image is sharp, but invariably the final photo proves to be correct. Small sensors gain from massive depth of field, so you’d be unlucky to miss your focus. The zoom function is digital rather than optical, dropping pixels in the process, and the USB slot requires a proprietary cable supplied in the box instead of a standard version.

A 14MP sensor delivers acceptable performance in low light with the ability to extend to 1600 ISO

FANCY FEATURES Surprisingly, the Z340 also offers a range of manual controls to configure specific shooting modes. ISO sensitivity, metering modes, white balance, exposure compensation, flash modes and a few special effects can be preselected. Program shooting modes include blink detection, smile detection and a long list of creative options. You also get video capture to generate AVI files to a respectable 720p standard.

WHAT WE THOUGHTLove it:

✓ Zink technology makes the printing experience clean and quick

✓ Bluetooth printing from other devices makes it twice as useful

Like it:

✓ The retro feel of the design adds to the fun factor

✓ 3x4-inch prints are wallet-friendly, yet not too small

Loathe it:

✗ The external controls are retro in the worst possible way

✗ Non-standard USB connector is just plain annoying

✗ Speed and image quality fall short of most compact cameras

Sensor: 14MP CCD

Lens: Fixed 7.5mm f/3.2 - equivalent to 43mm on SLR with 5x digital zoom

LCD Display: 2.7” fold-out

Shutter: Minimum shutter speed of 1/1500 sec and maximum of 4 secs

Memory: 32MB internal memory and a slot for SD/SDHC cards

Print Technology: Zink 3x4” Paper

Battery: Built-in Lithium-ion Rechargable can deliver 25 prints per charge

Connectivity: USB2.0 with proprietary cable

Video capture: Support 720p HD video capture

Dimensions: 12.75 x 15.49 x 6.5cm

Weight: 652g

DETAILS

7/10 RATING

VERDICT

As a camera it falls a little short of contemporary compacts, but we’ve never seen a more instant option for printing photos since the analogue original.

“The Polaroid brand evokes such deep connections with a time when cameras were pure fun”

in auto mode. You’ll get plenty of useful images for posting online or printing onto Zink paper, but more demanding output would benefit from a better lens system.

Mum’s the WordWe decided to road test the Z340 on someone who might remember the original Polaroid models: my mother-in-law. She’s no luddite, having mastered Angry Birds on her iPad and scheduled the PVR to record episodes of Midsomers Murders. One Christmas she got a Canon Selphy 800, and after a little research she was printing photos off her compact camera.

Two aspects were under review from my mother-in-law: how intuitive are the controls? And how desirable is this camera compared to a modern point-and-shoot?

Testing for intuitiveness got off to a bad start, having handed her the camera without any explanation or a manual to read over first. The power button was undiscoverable and reviewing or printing the photos needed some guidance. Once the basic operation was explained, the camera was indeed simple to use, no manual necessary. Applying preset styles to the pics with the on-screen menu added some charm to the 1970s feel of the prints.

The verdict from my mother-in-law was: “It’s too big to carry around with me. But I’d like it around the house for when guests come over for lunch.”

Loading fresh stocks of paper into the camera is equally mother-in-law-friendly: just rip open a fresh pack of ten sheets and try not to load them upside down. Zink include a barcoded blank in each pack that tells the camera when new paper is loaded. If all is correct, the barcode sheet is pushed out instantly and you’re ready to roll.

Digital SpeedThis is not the fastest digital camera on the market, in every respect: the autofocus system is almost as

low-tech as the original Polaroid film; continuous shooting takes one frame every 2.8 seconds; turning on the unit takes over 4 seconds; and the instant prints take a little under a minute to pop out. You can set up the camera to automatically print when you shoot, or select which frames to print as you want them. If you do decide to print instantly, then you have to wait for the printing to complete before you can take another snap.

The cost of the paper is a factor when shopping for a Z340. The retail price for 30 sheets of 3x4-inch paper is around $20, which is not outrageous but neither is it inexpensive. There are lots of options to make prints from your digital camera, but none as simple as this – nor as convenient.

What you don’t get from the instant print experience on Zink paper is that sense of mystery when you peel back the paper to reveal your picture. The digital version spits out photos as they print, so you see the image emerge gradually. It loses a little of the wonder and magic from the original, but it’s still a big step forward.

TOO COMPLEX? From the top it’s similar to an early Kodak digital compact – and could be more user-friendly. Really, all that’s needed is a big button to shoot and a little button to print.

INSTANT FUNThe special 3x4-inch paper goes into the back, and the printer module beams the image onto the surface to produce a full-colour output.