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Polaroid Film Looks

Compressed highlights, milky blacks and the professional peel-apart packs that lived in every studio.

Polaroid instant film sealed the entire chemistry inside the print, and the compromises that forced — limited range, lifted blacks, colour that shifts with temperature — became the aesthetic. The professional peel-apart packs were studio tools used to check lighting before the real exposure; Type 665 even gave you a usable negative. Their look is now sought deliberately, which would have puzzled the people using them as test shots.

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8 looks in this selection

Polaroid 664

Peel-apart black and white pack film with medium contrast.

1 rendering

Polaroid 665

Peel-apart black and white film that produced a usable negative as well as a print.

9 renderings

Polaroid 667

The very fast peel-apart black and white film used for lighting tests.

1 rendering

Polaroid 669

The standard professional peel-apart colour film — the classic Polaroid palette.

11 renderings

Polaroid 672

A medium-speed peel-apart black and white film.

1 rendering

Polaroid 690

A higher-saturation peel-apart colour film — 669 with more punch.

16 renderings

Polaroid Polachrome

Instant 35mm slide film with a visible additive colour screen.

1 rendering

Polaroid Time Zero Expired

Expired SX-70 Time Zero film — degraded colour, heavy casts and blotchy shadows.

10 renderings