In an instant, an era is ending at Polaroid

For anyone growing up in the 1950s and '60s, the Polaroid Land camera was a technological wonder. Instant photos, right before your eyes.

But digital cameras have rendered the old Polaroid camera obsolete, and the Minnetonka-based company that owns Polaroid is phasing out the instant analog camera and its special film after a 60-year run chronicling birthday parties, weddings and crime scenes.

The next phase for Polaroid, a division of Petters Group Worldwide, is a digital platform that includes instant, portable printers.

The old Polaroid camera has been out of production since last year. The manufacturing of film will end this spring, leaving Fujifilm as the only maker of instant film worldwide.

"Marketplace conditions, a lack of availability of raw materials and consumers' transition to digitally based products made it impossible for the company to sustain the manufacturing of the instant film line," Polaroid said in a statement.

Polaroid factories that produce the film are closing in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands. The company's total workforce has been reduced to 150 employees at the Concord, Mass., headquarters and a number of additional jobs at a remaining production facility in the Boston suburb of Waltham.

Embracing digital

Some of those Polaroid-branded products are now sold at Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City and other major retailers. The NPD Group, a trade organization that tracks the sale of consumer electronic products, ranks Polaroid third in the sales of portable DVDs and in the top 10 for digital imaging.

Polaroid President Tom Beaudoin said Polaroid is counting on a new inkless mobile printer called ZINK as its "killer digital imaging product." The printer is the size of a BlackBerry and prints photos the size of a business card. It will hit the market next fall and initially sell for $149, Beaudoin said.

"It's cool, it's fun, it's mobile, it's instant," he said.

Digital cameras changed photography but in its time the instant Polaroid created the kind of buzz reserved now for innovations like the iPhone. Most baby boomers can remember watching in awe the first time they saw one of the cameras push out tabs the size of index cards that developed into a photograph right before their eyes.

Plenty of old-school fans

The Polaroid instant camera was invented by Edwin Land and hit the market in 1948. For years it was the Cadillac of home cameras for its instant results, but it had other uses, too.

Law enforcement occasionally used the camera when time was of the essence.

"If we needed a photograph immediately we'd use the Polaroid," said Sgt. Dan Beasley, a district investigator for the State Patrol. "For instance if there was a serious assault and we needed to show the victim right away to a district attorney [for charges to be filed], we'd use it."

The State Patrol now relies on film and digital cameras, Beasley said.

Derek Till, senior art director at the Minneapolis advertising agency Colle + McVoy, said the Polaroid instant camera was popular among professional photographers when he entered the business more than 20 years ago.

But Till has fond memories of the Polaroid days and the scraps of discarded paper from the photos that would cover the floor.

"I still like having something in your hand to look at for detail," Till said.