In Film, What’s Old May Still Be New Again

We recently published an affectionate look at a Polaroid Land camera, whose peel-apart instant film is long out of production except for a very few single exposure packs form a …read more

Jun 6, 2025 - 19:00

In Film, What’s Old May Still Be New Again

We recently published an affectionate look at a Polaroid Land camera, whose peel-apart instant film is long out of production except for a very few single exposure packs form a boutique manufacturer. All that was left was a discussion of modifying it for conventional roll film, or perhaps hacking a modern back-to-front Polaroid sheet into it.

Never say never though, because along come the Chinese company Light Lens Lab with a short announcement at the end of a post talking about grain structures and anti-halation layer materials for their black and white film.

Lastly, with our future development plan, we are currently developing and researching instant peel-apart film, with plans on producing and making available black and white peel-apart film by 2025 in various format. We aim to have an update on our packaging and test shot for the next development/research progress installment. We are also researching, developing and producing colour reversal films that consist of a dye-incorporating development process, commonly known as K-14, for 135 and 120 formats in 2026.

So there you go, no sooner has Hackaday declared a format unavailable, than it shows every sign of reappearing. At this point we’d like to take the opportunity to report that McDonalds Szechuan Chicken McNugget sauce will never ever be available again.

So what does this mean? First of all, assuming that the stuff doesn’t need the GDP of a small country to buy in Europe, the Hackaday Polaroid 104 will be able to shoot in its native format again. But perhaps more interestingly, it opens up a new option for the camera hacker. Pack film is much easier than modern instant film to deal with; it requires only rollers and someone to tug on that paper tab, no gears or motors involved. We’re here for this.

The observant will also have noted at the end of the announcement, mention of a dye-incorporating development process. This refers to the colour chemistry seen in Kodachrome, a long-extinct single-layer film that offered legendarily sharp and vibrant-coloured pictures at the expense of a very complex development path. We’d love to see it, but we’ll take the instant pack film and run.

The Hackaday Land camera is here.