Polaroid photography has always caught my eye. After dabbling on Lomography and pin-hole camera I was looking forward to play around with Polaroid. But unfortunately Polaroid killed the Polaroid photography scene, by stopping the production of the special film roll.
Polaroid in an attempt to get back the market share earlier this year launched the Polaroid PoGo, the digital equivalent of the Polaroid camera and much better than it.
Some of the features that are included in this digi-cam cum photo printer is the Zink technology, 3 inch LCD display, basic photo editing tool (crop and add border). The Zink (zero ink) technology is pretty neat. It doesn’t require any cartridges and nor does it require any ink. The paper is special and when heated by the camera it forms a fully color photograph that is smudge and tear resistant.
Since it doesn’t use the conventional ink for printing, the camera is very sleek and in fact can fit into the shirt pocket. There is no optical zoom, but the digital zoom is up-to 4x. The camera itself is 5 mp. Though you can’t compare it to the point and shoot cameras we get these days, PoGo does allow you to install an external SD card, where you can store photographs. Since it has a LCD, you can preview photographs before printing them.
The buttons are a bit of a pain and the UX team has done a very shoddy job. Even to set something simple, such as changing the photo mode to indoor, you might have to punch 4-5 buttons. But the start up time for the PoGo gives the point and shoot a run for its money. It boots within 2 seconds ready to capture the moment.
The photos can be printed on Zink papers which are 2″ x 3″. Since the paper has the ink in it, the consumable is very low. The camera can be used as long as you have supply of the Zink paper. A pack of 80 Zink papers cost about $20 which means a photo would cost you around 25 cents. Not bad for a Polaroid camera.
You can load up to 10 Zink papers at a time into the camera. The rated time says you can print up to 25 photos with a single battery charge, but I have printed up to 40 photos without a problem.
Also, the Zink papers have full stickers at the back, so they enable you to stick your photos anywhere. This is very useful. Trust me.
Considering it is only 5 mp and has no optical zoom and has an irritating UI, I would still recommend it because it can print the photo on the fly. (I would have loved it if after printing you had to shake the photo a couple a times in the air, but the PoGo completely develops the photos.)
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