Posted by Mike on February 1st, 2008 in display, heat, optic

Halleluiah, a resurrection to end all technology resurrections, the rebirth of the Polaroid film pack! This Zink printer, “inkless”, as they claim, uses the Polaroid “inkless” film pack technology to make high resolution pictures.

For you youngsters, Polaroid instant pictures were almost as ubiquitous as “Brownie” cameras during my adolescence and young adulthood. I think that Polaroid was still hanging on in the form of identification cards, drivers licenses and the like, until the steamroller of the digital camera age just about wiped them out.

The “old” Polaroid process used flat packs of chemicals, next to the “film” or emulsion to develop the “positive” after the image was recorded in the usual light to silver photographic process on the “negative”. The Zink seems to use a process like a thermal printer: Little heated pixels, excited in the right order by your cell phones’ image processor, to cause the dyes in its film pack to be deposited in the right spots to create the picture.

What is really neat about this is not so much the product, but the thinking that combined- thoughts of dye sublimation printers, thermal printing and the Polaroid process into a simple lightweight “must have” device. My hat, uncovering my balding head, is off to them. By the way if you want to see some interesting artistic uses of the Polaroid process go to: http://www.alternativephotography.com/process_emulsionlifts.html

http://www.physorg.com/news120823058.html