The Polaroid Flip is one of those devices that sounds more fun in theory than it does to actually take it into the field. The $200 full-size instant camera looks a little too much like your parents’ 50-year-old Polaroid they used to take their vintage, cracked, and sun-spotted beach photos. Hell, that may be appealing to some of you nostalgic for your grandmother’s photo albums. The Flip comes with a few important upgrades over a lower-cost Polaroid Go or Polaroid Now that help it seem extra enticing for its price. And yet, lugging this hefty beast of a camera around made me wish I kept it at home.
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The big selling point of the Polaroid Flip is its “hyperfocal” lens system. It’s essentially four lenses on a rotating gear, and the Flip is smart enough to swap between its various focal lengths depending on your distance to the subject you’re shooting. The max sweet spot for its farthest-field lens is around eight feet. That’s rather far for an instant camera, though if you’re out and about with friends, you will normally snap your pics at a much closer distance. Out of all the photos I took on the Polaroid Flip, I didn’t find any where the subject looked out of focus. So long as the flash didn’t make their skin glow like the surface of the sun, my friends and coworkers were happy to take home the pics printed off the Polaroid Flip.
Polaroid Flip
It’s a nostalgic camera that takes fun printed shots with strong focus capabilities. You just won’t feel great lugging it around.
Pros
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Takes good in-focus shots from different ranges -
Easy to use -
Prints classic Polaroid-size photos
Cons
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Heavy and hard to hold -
Exposure without flash isn’t great, even in direct sunlight -
Film packs are expensive
The various focal lengths mean the camera can take better landscapes, though your phone camera with its wider range of aspect ratios may be a better choice for your next hike. The Flip’s other big selling point is its special light in the viewfinder that will blare red if there’s too much or not enough light for each shot. The thing is, you’ll rarely find yourself lacking light for your photos. I took the Polaroid Flip to a Manhattan rooftop bar on a bright, clear day with the sun creeping toward the horizon—nearly golden hour. Even then, I found that without flash, subjects would still be underexposed.
The Flip won’t avoid the other issues that come from instant flash photography, but I wouldn’t change that for the world. There’s an evocative charm of the traditional Polaroid blemishes, from white spots to sun flare, that you would miss if they weren’t there. The photos I took with coworkers are going up on a wall, or at least all of those that weren’t so underexposed you can’t tell who it is.
While the photos came out crisp, actually using the Polaroid Flip is a hefty task. The camera weighs 1.4 pounds, and it’s a big sucker to boot. Carrying it around with a shoulder strap felt like I was lugging around a small brick. It weighed down my backpack, and I can tell it will take up a large amount of real estate in any other bag or pocketbook. Like most full-image Polaroids, the device does not have any one place you’re supposed to hold it. If you bring it up to take a quick photo, you’ll end up with your fingers in front of the photo eject port more often than not.
The Polaroid Flip is retro in many ways, down to its sloped body and extended viewfinder. Its design hedges closest to a Polaroid Sun 660 from 1981. That camera brought Polaroid’s sonar autofocus to the fore, plus it used a similar rotating lens system to the Flip. It also had a flip-up flash section that protected all the most sensitive bits when closed. The Flip isn’t as premium as the $600 Polaroid I-2, and it isn’t built for creating depth of field on the produced shots. Instead, it’s the kind of device you’re supposed to have in your closet for family gatherings or take in your bag when you’re out on an adventure with family or compatriots. There are few better feelings than going out for drinks and then handing out a printed photo as a memento—though after waiting several minutes for the film to develop.
For review, Polaroid sent me two packages of eight photos. I burned through the majority of those in a single evening, and I even had to reload during my time out with my colleagues. The Flip works with the company’s Color and B&W i-Type film. Both sell for $18 individually, but it’s slightly cheaper per pack if you buy in bulk. Depending on how often you bring it out for family outings, the Polaroid could start to get very expensive, far beyond the $200 asking price.
Polaroids are worth their price if you plan to cement the photos as memories. I enjoy the shots I took with the Flip, but I also know a more compact instant camera that shoots wallet-sized images, like a Fujifilm Instax camera, could be more transportable and still let you toss souvenirs to your friends after an evening out. The Flip is still straightforward, near idiot-proof, and solid (it better be for how heavy it is). It feels like a step up from a smaller, cheaper Polaroid Go, but it’s an upgrade that will have to stay at home.
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