Kickstarter: Impossibly goofy! Impossible Project iPhone adaptor

Its crazy. I love it. You can help kickstart the project and buy one at the same time.

Jason Weisberger is Boing Boing's publisher. He often does what he ought, instead of what he should. On instagram and twitter he is @jlw

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http://profiles.google.com/stephen.schenck Stephen Schenck

The only thing I don’t like about this is the iPhone business. I like how they’re considering making cradles for specific Androids, but that just drives home why I really don’t like this cradle-design at all – it should be adjustable. Sure, you’d need to find a way to make sure the screen gets centered, not just the phone as a whole, but that’s a problem worth solving.
- morcheeba
  
  Tell me about it!
tewsday

So, wait, this is real? The thing like a Polaroid camera that attaches to your iPhone, which we invented so we don’t have to carry around things like cameras, is not a joke?
- Tim Drage
  
  It’s possible for something to be real and (kind of ) a joke
  - tewsday
    
    You’re right. I have been to Urban Outfitters. I should know better.
Petzl

The next “innovation” is: keeping the iPhone mounted to the device and creating the photograph immediately after you aim and click the photo.
andyhavens

I’d like a thing that connects a long copper wire to my iPhone so I can turn text messages into telegraph signals. Then I’ll finally have a use for my iPhone app that decodes telegraph signals.
- ldobe
  
  I want one that connects my iPhone directly to a smoke machine on my roof, so I can signal my buds a couple of blocks over.
mccrum

I think I’ll just stick with my Polaroid, it seems like it does the same thing but saves me a pretty big step.
http://twitter.com/ErnestValdemar Ernest Valdemar

If they’re going to travel all the way to Braunschweig, couldn’t they figure out how to render my digital images in liver sausage? Think of the elegant receptions you could cater!
BeaverBeaver

The poopoo squad in full effect! If it helps keep the impossible project going, awesome. If people would like physical photos and this fullfills that need, awesome. If it helps you riff, awesome too. I feel like everyone commenting could have comments from 10 yrs ago in a camera phone related post making jokeses about not needing cameras on phones.Oh you Jokesesers!
- Alpacaman
  
  What need does this fill that cannot already be done more cheaply, quickly, and effectively? I think it is fine as some kind of postmodern-pseudo-notstalgia-replicator-object (although I have reservations), but claiming a functional basis for a product that is only sold through emotional and aesthetic appeal is going a bit far.
  - BeaverBeaver
    
    The video shows people using it in real time, which is absurd, but how do you cheaply and easily get Polaroids of digital photos you took with your phone? Presenting it as something you carry around is ridiculous but taking pictures with your phone and at a later point “developing them” seems like a legit use. I mean that’s the way film cameras work. If you like and want the aesthetic of a Polaroid, the same way you would of any film stock, but like the portability and practicality of a phone (vs carrying a giant Polaroid camera) I don’t see a down side… other than doing this one by one.
    
    I don’t know how to argue functional. It has a function, if that function doesn’t appeal to you that doesn’t make it not functional. I think it’s a nice bridge between digital and physical things. It’s nostalgic appeal is the same as a typewriter, but nostalgia doesn’t negate function. What’s the function of a picture anyway, for most people? Nostalgia?
    
    I see your point still but as things are completely switching over to digital, after years of fear and transition, I think things like this are really cool, personally.
    - Alpacaman
      
      I was thinking more along the lines of a printer and instagram, or taking the photos down to your local camera shop and having prints made for a few cents. Granted, the white frame not there, but this could be added in. You could argue that that makes it a fake polaroid, but I would say that was already sacrificed, seeing as the image was originally made in an iPhone. Looking at the cost of the film in question, this seems like an incredibly expensive way of doing things.
      
      It may well serve as a nice bridge between the digital and physical, and it probably does, but this is an emotional appeal, not a functional one. Unlike, say, small pocketable camera phones, as size and portability are functional bases.
      
      My function point was not about it functioning, but more to say that this function has been superceded. The only appeal for this is emotional – which I also said, was fine.
      
      As an aside, I perosonally do a lot of darkroom work myself, including large format 4×5 inch sheet film work (you know the huge cameras with the bellows they might show in period films? Yeah.) I find this immensely enjoyable – the work is oddly meditative and wonderfully tactile. I generally like seeing developments in the film world, but I do not see this iPhone thingy as a sustainable devleopment, the process has the fun removed from it and the only thing left is the kitschy look, and so I see it as unsustainable. The only thing I think film photography has going for it is fun – an emotional appeal, but this is just fine.
    - http://www.facebook.com/brianrazencain Brian Cain
      
      “…how do you cheaply and easily get Polaroids of digital photos you took with your phone?”
      
      First world problems on aisle 4, clean up needed
      - BeaverBeaver
        
        This logic completely destroys like 90% of our daily lives, and like 1000% of our internet lives. The comment was a direct response to “there are cheaper blah blah.” It’s even cyclical , commenting on first world problems in a thread about iPhone Polaroids is a first world problem you saw fit to address. Meta first world problems!
    - C W
      
      “how do you cheaply and easily get Polaroids of digital photos you took with your phone”
      
      You seem to miss the point of Polaroids entirely.
      - BeaverBeaver
        
        That specific comment was in response to the concept that there are “alternative” products that do “this” where “this” is transferring photos from an iPhone to a Polaroid.
        
        The point of Polaroid is to have a Polaroid… I can make a pinhole camera out of my ass and get a Polaroid. I can use a plastic camera with an instant back and get a Polaroid… the concept is having a physical item that is a picture that I captured through whatever means and “printed/developed/conjured” in my hand.
        You seem to be implying there is a point to a Polaroid that somehow exists outside of having a Polaroid. Please inform what other point there is to “having something.” Is there a tax break? Lowers my cholesterol? I feel compelled to defend something I will never buy and that I think is overpriced because I am having a knee jerk reaction to way people seem to be so closed off to an idea, having physical pictures, that a decade ago was a huge reason people were slow to adopt digital formats.Polaroids are nice, and if you like them, and if you buy the film and want it to be around for longer… this is good. If you like for people who make stuff to make money and continue making cool stuff this is good.If you like to piss on stuff that you don’t see a direct personal use for or you don’t like the target audience, hipsters/instagram users/iphone users… well then yeah this is a terrible thing for you to have to know exists. I’m very sorry.
    - tewsday
      
      The silly part isn’t that people would want physical prints of the pictures on their iPhones. It’s that the product offers a service that already exists in a less complicated, less expensive, more genuine format if only the person holding the camera had a little common sense: put down the iPhone and pick up a Polaroid camera instead.
      
      It’s like if someone invented a contraption that could turn the mp3′s on my iPod into a CD.
      
      Sometimes the solution is *less* technology, not more.
      - BeaverBeaver
        
        Completely understandable point. and anyone who buys this to BRING with them as they go out is kind of a douche and should do as you say. It’s a rabbit hole though, why not carry a real camera and film, and why not develop it yourself? Not bad things at all but not the same as carrying your iphone around.
        
        The short and sweet of what I like, in theory, is having polaroids without carrying around a camera and film. If there was an auto feature that let you “process” x photos autmatically instead of one at a time it would seem more practical.I have no real use for this other than maybe sticking pictures on the fridge or maybe sharing pics with older people in my family in a familiar and “fun” format.I could very much see this in skymall, it falls into that category for sure. I just dig the direct bridge between something old and new.
      - Donald Petersen
        
        I dunno, Beaver, seems like it goes pretty far past a point of diminishing returns. It’s not difficult to find a collapsible SX-70 on eBay that’s not really all that much more cumbersome than an iPhone, if one really likes Polaroids that much. And for the Kickstarter price (half the MSRP of the thing once the Kickstart is over), one could pick up three or four SX-70s.
        
        But whatever. Nobody involved in the Impossible Project could be accused of being a coldblooded pragmatist fixated on the bottom line.
- mccrum
  
  No, seriously, this is just adding a step into the process. I can scan my film shots and turn them digital. This is only a weird version of Instamatic that I find there’s no use for.
  
  Don’t get me wrong, I hope they make millions off it and drive down the price of Silver Shade (given the way their kickstarter is going, huzzah), but it seems a little silly to me.
racas01

I simply didn’t get the functionality of this goofy-like device. present technology is way past what these guys are promoting here. it should be sold as an antic really. I like the fact that they are considering making cradles for Androids. though.
Tim Drage

It should also include a second adaptor to re-photograph the polaroids using instagram :)
- Alpacaman
  
  Then we can photograph a photpgraph, alternating between print and digital, ad infinitum! It sounds like another plane of hell, but it is conceptually interesting at least.
  - mccrum
    
    This sounds like an art piece that is going to end up selling for several thousand.
    - Alpacaman
      
      1/2 price if you buy it during the kickstarter!
tubacat

Where do they get the film? Polaroid is kaput. Or is this all a big joke???
- Alpacaman
  
  Project Impossible took over the machinery Polariod once used, and are now selling absolutely bizarre polaroid emulsions of their own, for a king’s ransom.
  
  Personally I think the people who buy this stuff would put their money to better use buying TriX, or other remaining Kodak and Fujifilm films, if only to ameliorate the culling of film types we are seeing.
  - mccrum
    
    Actually, after processing, et. al. the cost of my Impossible film runs about the same as how much I spend on 120 film. I disagree that the emulsions are bizarre, most of the issues presented were due to the Kyoto Protocol outlawing a number of the chemicals used in the original processes.
    
    I don’t think picking an analog film format and saying “we should only support these guys” is the answer if they can both carve out a market and survive. I don’t buy less 120 film because I use Impossible and I don’t buy less Impossible because I’m using 120. They both have a different aesthetic based on the goal I am trying to achieve. There’s room for both.
    
    Will either see the pre-2000 era levels of production? Never. But there’s no need to call for one to die so the other can live.
    - Alpacaman
      
      Fair enough – I merely get angsty when I see films I use being discontinued. Although, I am curious, how much do you pay for 120 film and processing? What film is this? Back of envelope calculations tell me that I am paying, being generous, around $1.45 NZD (including processing) for a shot of 120, much less than the $4 NZD (not including shipping) I would for Silver Shade.
      - http://boingboing.net/ Jason Weisberger
        
        I think about $1.45 USD a frame, purchased, processed and developed. Not including the shipping for 120 color print. Slide I think is the same as it is not mounted.
LinkMan

http://www.yubztalkusa.com/

That is all.