You probably have heard of Polaroid cameras from your parents or grandparents or old movies that feature them, like "Shutter" and "Home Alone 2."
These cameras use a self-developing film to create a printed picture of the object you photographed, allowing you to take a picture of something and have it printed immediately.
While this piece of tech was popular in the 1970s, these cameras are making a comeback; they have the same function but with a modern look.
However, is it worth getting a modern Polaroid camera in this day and age?
The Benefits Of Modern Polaroid Cameras
Polaroid cameras are the digital cameras of their time. You only have to aim it at your subject and press the shutter button to get your picture momentarily, per Photography Axis. You don't even need to worry about digital storage, either, since you'll be getting a physical copy of your pictures every time.
While it is tempting to point and shoot at anything that moves, keep in mind that even with a modern look, these cameras don't have a way of adjusting their white balance, focus, aperture, and the other settings you'd find with a DSLR or digital camera, per Valerie Valise.
As such, you may want to study up to compose your shots properly - it'll offset your photo's lack of quality, focus, and color. Thankfully, this limitation can help budding photographers compose their photos before clicking the shutter button to make them count.
Having your pictures developed immediately on-scene makes the picture it prints easy to carry and could serve as a souvenir for you or your companions if you're traveling in a group. Their vintage look helps them decorate houses or fill up a physical photo album for you to look back to whenever you want.
Speaking of printing pictures, Polaroids already frame the pictures they produce during printing, giving you fewer headaches when it comes to printing the pictures you took.
Last but not least is that Polaroid cameras are relatively inexpensive compared to DSLR cameras, per The Photography Professor. Their price tag is also worth the value you're getting compared to some budget digital cameras that the public found to be not producing high-quality images as good as a Polaroid camera.
Best Modern Polaroid Cameras In The Market
If these arguments managed to convince you to try out a Polaroid camera for yourself, you may want to try out our picks for Polaroid camera bundles to get you quite a head start in your instant camera journey.
If you want more recent suggestions, your best bet to get into the instant camera scene is getting yourself a Fujifilm Instax Mini 11. According to PC Mag, it's inexpensive (some cost as low as $60 on Amazon), has true automatic exposure, and runs on AA batteries.
Another Polaroid camera to consider is the Polaroid OneStep Plus, which uses the classic Polaroid look but with many modern gimmicks, like a companion app to control the camera's settings, per Wired.
