By Andrew Liszewski
The classic Polaroid might be dead, but the company still feels there’s a demand for a quick and easy way to spit out a hard copy of a photo, even if taken on a digital camera. And that’s basically what the Polaroid Pogo is, and does. On the digital camera side of things it’s pretty basic with a 5 megapixel sensor, 3-inch LCD display, SD card slot and a handful of software post-processing options like cropping, color corrections and red-eye reduction. But instead of only being able to view your shots on the LCD display or a computer, you can actually print out a copy right from the camera thanks to its built-in ZINK printer.
The ZINK paper refills used by the Polaroid PoGo camera are roughly the size of a business card, 2×3 inches, and have an adhesive backing allowing you to use them as stickers, which apparently boosts the ‘fun factor.’ The paper is an advanced composite material that’s embedded with color dye crystals that are heat activated. Depending on the temperature and length of the heat applied, the crystals will turn either cyan, yellow or magenta which end up producing a color photo. While the prints apparently have a life of about 10 years, they’re not ‘set’ when they come out of the camera which means you can actually do additional post processing and experimentation by throwing it an oven or microwave.
I can’t say I was that impressed with the sample that Polaroid printed for us at the booth, but I think an over-zealous flash on the camera resulted in a photo that wasn’t that great to begin width. So I’m going to hold off on a verdict until I see a few more printouts.
