Please hit LIKE to support this documentary and thank you so much for watching. This was the biggest project I've ever done in my over 13 years full-time on UA-cam and I'm thrilled with how it came together. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to this channel if you haven't already. Your support will help more of these videos get made. Thank you! -Kevin
@@russianbear0027He primarily does Vsauce2, but has been so fascinated with the magazine that he collaborated with them to revive their youtube channel
Too emotional...had tears in my eyes 😢 Liked n Subbd. BTW, I have a square roll of Poloroid instant slide film and the associated developing processor. They are from the early 1980s but the film has mostly been refrigerated, if you are interested 🙏🏼
I found it exhausting and fragmented to watch and eventually started scrubbing forward. The project was doomed to be a lemon so he made lemonade. Which was full of pulp and pips.
Thank you for just letting Florian “Doc” Kaps talk. I mean this is the best way, but you barely said a sentence while he was talking and he was the focus of the camera almost entirely. It is great to see people recognise a wealth of information and just let them go and get that out into the world. Thank you.
This is one of the best documentary style films I’ve seen in a long time. Thanks Kevin. I genuinely feel like I appreciate analog technology more now. I’m so glad to see people use the things they collect as they were intended to be used and not just kept for the sake of preserving. You both strike a perfect balance
This was absolutely incredible. The passion Doc has for his work is infectious. I am so happy there are people around who will continue to inspire the younger generations. Kevin, the large format Polaroid is beautiful. You are so deserving to have that print!
It's fascinating that technology that costed 100 million dollars is completely forgotten today. I mean there is even polaroid photo camera Lego set. But video camera is almost unknown by mainstream public.
There was this engineering channel i used to watch here on yt, and the guy would go over different failed and forgotten technology, it was interesting because he not only explained how it came to be, but why things didn't work out for it. There's a LOT to discuss on these topics, a lot of money goes into this, some tech i wish we had gotten too. Usually it's bad marketing or it was too expensive, or a technology that came around too late to compete. An example would be like, going over betamax or laserdisc, or some things i never knew existed because they never went beyond prototypes. Fun to imagine alternate reality tech, what almost was.
@@NaimaIslam-mb7ip Not really. Polaroid was one of the biggest camera and film companies on the planet. Modern companies spend billions on R&D, and a lot of times we never see those products because they end up either not working out or the company feels it's more cost-effective to take a loss rather than introduce something that has passed its time/been beaten by a competing product. I have no doubt Polaroid sunk a ton of money into this product thinking it would be the next big thing only to be beaten to the punch by competitors with better/cheaper products.
Just finished watching this Kevin, and it was absolutely fascinating, intriguing, and mind boggling. I now want to hunt down my old Polaroid cameras, go and visit Doc’s place in Vienna, and actually BUY that Reel-to-Reel tape machine that I’ve longed for all my life. I admit it - I’m 60 years young in 🇬🇧 , and I love analog things! 🫶🏽 Thank you so very much for creating this and sharing👏🏽I’m going to watch it again now… 🔁😊👍🏽
Dude you really put in a lot of effort into this one. As a tech, you are a wizard. I mean, you worked magic here my friend. Good freaking job. You earned a sub.
At 1:04:27 I instantly started crying from passion at the worthy sacrifice of a sparce and rare piece of history being used. This is truly a treasure from the analong age in modern times.
You can totally get a high level of "craftsmanship" with digital methods. The issue is that since it's very easy to get any results, few people ever feel the need to dive in. With analog methods, you need to dive in for even the most basic stuff, so you both filter out those who were never going to dive deep to begin with, and the ones that start already need to develop skill to use it.
Exeptional work and a truly fascinating interview, thank you for shining a spotlight on Doc. It's strange for me aswell as I'm practically in the neighborhood yet I've never heard of him before until today.
I absolutely adored this video. I'm not super about analog tech but seeing the love behind this video is really touching. The kindred spirits meeting across the world over this tech is truly something great. I love videos like this, thank you dearly for making it
i hate youtube so much, this video should have exploded with at least 100k views by now with how high quality this is, and how incredible your videos for this channel are. much love kevin!!!! i watch every single video here, vsauce, AND all of your mind blow videos. its channels like yours that keep positivity and excitement in the scientific and mathematic communities. been watching since i was just 15, 26 now! sorry if that made you feel old, but i really do love the work you put in on projects like these, and mind blow is probably my single favorite youtube series of all time. now we just need to get jake to bring back LUT!
After all of your time and hard work, when the only exposed tape came up blank, I had tears. To have such passion and dedication end without satisfaction of a successful Polavision video, I would have been devastated. I knew nothing about this tech when I sat down to watch, and by the end of it I had a version of me, 20 years before I existed, wanting to use this tech to capture my childhood. Thanks for your continued hard work educating us on old tech that is all but forgotten.
New subscriber !!! Amazing video!!! I grew up on Polaroid. My Dad was a film nut and when we were growing up we shot a lot of pictures on Polaroid cameras. We have so many family, vacation, pets and more subjects all on Polaroid film. Thanks for sharing your amazing journey and opening up a door for me to reconnect with the film of my youth.
I totally forgot what I initially wanted to comment, but this guy is fascinating and amazing!! Thank you so much for highlighting him and all of his positive, hard-work!!
This made me tear up, I'm so passionate about polaroid and analog mediums. Seeing doc share that passion so strongly and hearing the way he speaks about mistakes being what makes the medium special... it was a lot. Thanks for this amazing video
Someone like myself who appreciates vintage products of all kinds, I really appreciate your mind, heart and soul into allowing us to see true experience and love of preservation
Great video and I'm so glad everything came full circle for DOC and very thankful to have Polaroid instant film back and to be able to hold a real photograph
They myth that Kodak ignored digital and the market really needs to die. I don’t know how they “ignored” the market when they created the first consumer digital camera with the Apple QuickTake. If anything they invested far too much into digital technologies when they weren’t a semiconductor or optical company unlike Canon, Nikon or Sony. Their real failure was the poorly executed efforts to diversify their chemical business into pharmaceuticals and their repeated failure to integrate acquired companies into the business both of which Fujifilm were successful at. Not somehow missing digital photography.
I remember when our family got a Polariod, and how cool and exciting it was. But i never had heard of the Polavision. What a journey, thanks for it sharing with us all.
How many times will I watch this? MANY MANY MANY more times. What a beautiful, exciting, heart breaking, inspiring and magical experience had and shared. Truly thankful to all involved!
Fascinating and extremely well-done video! I was involved in the photo business at the time, and digital is what ultimately killed Polaroid. Scientific and engineering users burned through huge volumes of black and white Polaroid pack film for recording microscope and oscilloscope images. Even more massive though, was the fact that commercial photographers routinely shot _several_ Polaroids for each conventional film frame they captured, to check framing, focus and exposure. Back in the day (~1992), I ran a digital imaging VAR and consultancy and did a study for a commercial client that shot thousands (and thousands) of product photos every year. Even with the $50,000 digital studio cameras in that era, we determined that each one would pay for itself in about 9 months, just from the savings in Polaroid film :-0 Polaroid made good use of their advanced color science in the early days of digital, but their corporate and R&D overhead was based on the enormous profits from their film business, and there was no way to transform the company quickly enough to overcome that. It was sad, the amount of deep knowledge lost was tragic. (Huge props for the beyond-amazing honor of being the next to last person to ever have their photo taken on a 20x24 Polaroid!)
This video hit me emotionally. Very unexpected. I was always fascinated with my Uncles polaroid as a kid and wondered why he was the only one I knew that had one. Great tech.
Excellent video! However, I found it quite unfair to consider the iPhone as the first phone to incorporate a camera and make it portable. Especially coming from a channel that makes a point of showing technologies ahead of their time. The iPhone did not bring any disruptive technology, it just brought a new way of using resources that already existed.
All this work is remarkable, I was fascinated by the amount of information and the technical and poetic refinement of all the information brought to light here in this documentary.
I absolutely loved this... my dad was used to develop black and white and I learned developing and enlarging from him when I was 8 years old, and this video was so fascinating and nostalgic for me personally... thank you.
You and Doc have probably no idea how much this video matters. I got a GDR analogue camera for my birthday this year. It worked, the lenses had no scratches, it had a leather case with straps. I went on a journey to just take photos whenever I could. I switch between b/w and coloured film. Every film holds 35 photos right? Exactly 2 photos out of 105 photos were sharp. Everything else had double exposure, was not sharp or too long exposed. I was so freaking sad. But I was also so happy. Because sharp photos are not the goal here and I forgot that. The goal was to take a camera I have no idea to use correctly most of the times and just find stupid stuff to take photos of. And I did. I love my wonky photos. And you made me remind myself of that feeling. I gave up on that camera sind I the last set developed. I bought an adapter for a tripod. But that truly isn't why I love analogue so much! Now I got my analogue camera from my parents. Got it as a teenager and had too much fun. Sadly I don't own any cables anymore and it seems the battery is dead. But if I can get it working again...there is a tiny hope that I can shoot some super analogue looking videos. You know, like your Polaroid killer 💚
One of the coolest products that Polaroid created was a 4x5 film back for 4x5 cameras. I could take a photo with a 4x5 camera, have a black and white photo, AND have a 4x5 negative to use for other prints. I worked at a small camera store at the time and could check out equipment to use. However all supplies came out of my own pocket. The result was so much fun, I ended up purchasing several film packages to do more shooting.
i was a teenager in the late 1970's and i saw this advertised in the U.K. I think they must've been selling them off. I remember saving to buy it. I had great fun with it. It did work and seemed very high-tech. I think I made about nine 'movies' with it. Looking back, the quality was not great and sometimes you could see processing residue on the film when it was playing back. But at times like Christmas, it would be brought out to Great fanfare and a little movie event ensued.
The quote "marketing is what you do when your product is no good" is what we learned he understood when this product was finally produced. The original Polaroid cameras were amazing!
This is awesome! Thank you for making this. I myself am a fan of analog, I take pictures on an old 1947 Goldy Objectif Mystique camera, it makes beautiful pictures on 120 film. I have some 620 cameras I want to use as well, as well as get into videography with an old analog camera, but that's farther out.
Great documentary, thank you for putting this together - so great this content is free to watch for film nerds like myself, inspiring to see passion like this out there!
A wonderful and exciting adventure! I received a Polavision system for Christmas in 1977 or '78. Sadly, as you note, the developed film was unstable so, when trying to re-view my mini-masterpieces some ten years later, all that remained was a set of films with a broad opaque stripe obliterating most of every image. A shame the film technology wasn't better as, if I remember rightly, the engineering of the camera and player was very robust.
I was a 2000's kid. I didn't experience this stuff the same way everyone else did. I was given "leftovers" if you will. I grew up watching VHS and playing Super nintendo or Sega genesis. We couldn't afford new things so I got to play with all of that. I loved it. It never occured to me how different all the new stuff was. I just knew that What I was viewing, and experiencing was awesome. We would go to garage sales and find VHS tapes, Old board games, Clothes, Furniture, Books from way before my time like goosebumps, etc. I never cared about having the new stuff, It was always about the experience. I got my first polaroid when I was 10. I loved that thing. We got used film for it at first, then new film when it was back in re-production. I collected polaroids of every sort. I eventually was gifted on my 14th birthday, some 70 sonic the hedgehog books that where compounded from an inmate at the jail my uncle worked at, and a 8mm Polaroid handheld film camera. That shit was amazing to me. I sold it all when I was 17 thinking I was to old for it and needed to move on in my life. i regret that. I dont regret giving my Polaroid Camera's to a friend tho. I tried starting up my collection again but it became to expensive. This was a great video. It was anostalgia trip. Oh btw Yes I listened to cassette tapes in my moms car as a kid and I do listen to Vynil.
Doc is awesome and so inspirational. I highly respect people who have such passions and knowledge. And he sounds like Arnold as a bonus! Kevin this s a unique and incredible video, Thank you.
I clicked the video expecting a fun short exploration of an obsolete format. I came away over an hour later, touched at this love letter to Edwin Land and Florian "Doc" Kaps.
There's something. You have something, its hard to explain but i love the way you narrate your videos. Is very poetic and this one was really moving. I was on the verge of crying by the end of the video and i can't even explain why. You are a true artist, i wish you the best and keep on with the hard work
Here is some additional trivia about self-developing motion picture film: In the early 1960s, the writer Walter Tevis was interested in this idea and wrote it into his science fiction novel "The Man Who Fell to Earth". As a man from outer space, Thomas Newton brought self-developing motion picture film to earth, and became a millionaire from this invention through his "World Enterprises Corporation." This would have been a more advanced version of Polavision (though only fiction). This part of the story did not make it into the film with David Bowie.
People dreamed of tech in our hands that did everything long before "Iphones." AND Ipods. They were late to the party and charged you more for the privilege of owning their junk. I had PDAs that actually could play games on a color screen AND play MP3s at the same time, had a camera too. Granted, that junk was sold separately.
55:33 - I enjoy the symmetry of preserving digitally for everyone to access a thing given to you by someone who is working to preserve analog media for in-person use. I believe both methods are absolutely vital and equally important. Keeping physical relics, and keeping them fully functional, with new innovations necessary (the hand creation of new peel-apart instant film, for example,) is necessary so people can actually *experience* these bits of history. But preserving things digitally so they can be accessible to *EVERYONE*, even if not in their original form, is also vital, so people can *LEARN* about these bits of history. And Kevin, you are doing vital work in this. This feature-documentary-length video, accessible to all for free, is preserving this knowledge and history for generations to come.
So... Futurefuels in Batesville, AR used to be Eastman Chemical. It's pretty much a splinter of Eastman Chemical, including employees. There are still Eastman branded binders and documentation around the site. I know its not the right company, but I wonder if they might have the right reagent recipe. They do make small production runs of chemicals other than biodiesel, so it might be worth a shot to contact them. Who knows, the chemical reagent recipe might be sitting on some dusty shelf waiting to revive some polavision tapes.
What an absolutely awesome video. Thank you for making this and sharing it with us.. I'm truly fascinated with this retro tech about photography and videography.
This is a wonderful documentary on analog devices whose only flaw is that it starts off with one of the worst analog devices of the 20th century, Polavision. Even without videotape, the poor quality, short run time, lack of audio, and proprietary player compared to the already existing Super-8 format were sufficient to doom Polavision.
I never realized you can play master cuts, that's pretty cool! From liner notes and vintage ebay auctions I also noticed that a lot of masters were done on real-to-real at the time.
Please hit LIKE to support this documentary and thank you so much for watching. This was the biggest project I've ever done in my over 13 years full-time on UA-cam and I'm thrilled with how it came together. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to this channel if you haven't already. Your support will help more of these videos get made. Thank you! -Kevin
Great job! This is great!
Are you popular science the magazine?
Does the dislike button help?
@@russianbear0027He primarily does Vsauce2, but has been so fascinated with the magazine that he collaborated with them to revive their youtube channel
Too emotional...had tears in my eyes 😢 Liked n Subbd. BTW, I have a square roll of Poloroid instant slide film and the associated developing processor. They are from the early 1980s but the film has mostly been refrigerated, if you are interested 🙏🏼
“Teach me how to dance this” is an epic way to sign an email.
Yes
One of my first thoughts watching this was "gosh I hope Destin finds this"
I dance the body electric
And people say there's no magic in the world.
@@ZiddersRooFurry It's most often found in Europe.
This is not just a documentary. It's a poetic story and an emotional one at that. Amazing video!
You took the words right out of my mouth. I was on the verge of crying as i watched it and I don’t even know why 😢
Yeah I didn't expect to watch a tec vid and feel gutted at the end
I found it exhausting and fragmented to watch and eventually started scrubbing forward. The project was doomed to be a lemon so he made lemonade. Which was full of pulp and pips.
Thank you for just letting Florian “Doc” Kaps talk. I mean this is the best way, but you barely said a sentence while he was talking and he was the focus of the camera almost entirely.
It is great to see people recognise a wealth of information and just let them go and get that out into the world. Thank you.
Absolutely agree. It was so amazing to hear
This is one of the best documentary style films I’ve seen in a long time. Thanks Kevin. I genuinely feel like I appreciate analog technology more now.
I’m so glad to see people use the things they collect as they were intended to be used and not just kept for the sake of preserving. You both strike a perfect balance
This was absolutely incredible. The passion Doc has for his work is infectious. I am so happy there are people around who will continue to inspire the younger generations.
Kevin, the large format Polaroid is beautiful. You are so deserving to have that print!
It's fascinating that technology that costed 100 million dollars is completely forgotten today. I mean there is even polaroid photo camera Lego set. But video camera is almost unknown by mainstream public.
100 million dollars? Damn thats a stretch
Isn't that basically the camcorder ?
There was this engineering channel i used to watch here on yt, and the guy would go over different failed and forgotten technology, it was interesting because he not only explained how it came to be, but why things didn't work out for it. There's a LOT to discuss on these topics, a lot of money goes into this, some tech i wish we had gotten too. Usually it's bad marketing or it was too expensive, or a technology that came around too late to compete. An example would be like, going over betamax or laserdisc, or some things i never knew existed because they never went beyond prototypes. Fun to imagine alternate reality tech, what almost was.
@@NaimaIslam-mb7ip Not really. Polaroid was one of the biggest camera and film companies on the planet. Modern companies spend billions on R&D, and a lot of times we never see those products because they end up either not working out or the company feels it's more cost-effective to take a loss rather than introduce something that has passed its time/been beaten by a competing product. I have no doubt Polaroid sunk a ton of money into this product thinking it would be the next big thing only to be beaten to the punch by competitors with better/cheaper products.
Just finished watching this Kevin, and it was absolutely fascinating, intriguing, and mind boggling.
I now want to hunt down my old Polaroid cameras, go and visit Doc’s place in Vienna, and actually BUY that Reel-to-Reel tape machine that I’ve longed for all my life.
I admit it - I’m 60 years young in 🇬🇧 , and I love analog things! 🫶🏽
Thank you so very much for creating this and sharing👏🏽I’m going to watch it again now… 🔁😊👍🏽
As a Polaroid collector and junkie I'm so happy you made this an hour long full of history and amazing visuals. What a great story. ❤
Man, what a great guy for saving that factory. I hope he knows he is appreciated.
Dude you really put in a lot of effort into this one. As a tech, you are a wizard. I mean, you worked magic here my friend. Good freaking job. You earned a sub.
The passion you and Doc have is infectious. There’s nothing better than watching nerds geek out over their specific interests.
as my grandmother always told me "perfection is in imperfection"
That left me speechless. Fantastic job producing it. I'm sure you feel honored to have been welcomed and received by Doc the way you were. Too cool!
At 1:04:27 I instantly started crying from passion at the worthy sacrifice of a sparce and rare piece of history being used. This is truly a treasure from the analong age in modern times.
Please increase your testosterone levels by lifting weights and eating meat.
There are few channels that I would be willing to hunker down with for over an hour while talking about a camera that was made around when I was born.
Thank you Popular Science folks for letting Kevin work his magic. This is the best video yet
You can totally get a high level of "craftsmanship" with digital methods.
The issue is that since it's very easy to get any results, few people ever feel the need to dive in.
With analog methods, you need to dive in for even the most basic stuff, so you both filter out those who were never going to dive deep to begin with, and the ones that start already need to develop skill to use it.
Still watching, but this is beyond incredible and exciting. It deserves so many views!
Exeptional work and a truly fascinating interview, thank you for shining a spotlight on Doc. It's strange for me aswell as I'm practically in the neighborhood yet I've never heard of him before until today.
Absolutely stunning video and one of the best on youtube. Thank you so much
You have a camera man, filming another camera man 59:45 - Thanks for making this doco
I absolutely adored this video. I'm not super about analog tech but seeing the love behind this video is really touching. The kindred spirits meeting across the world over this tech is truly something great. I love videos like this, thank you dearly for making it
11:10 bro was simultaneously fearing and hoping for that very question
I audibly groaned when this man said he ran the tapes through x-ray machines.
Unbelievable.
Yeah he seemed concerned about how the techs handled it meanwhile I was wondering if the machine done any damage.
i hate youtube so much, this video should have exploded with at least 100k views by now with how high quality this is, and how incredible your videos for this channel are. much love kevin!!!! i watch every single video here, vsauce, AND all of your mind blow videos. its channels like yours that keep positivity and excitement in the scientific and mathematic communities. been watching since i was just 15, 26 now! sorry if that made you feel old, but i really do love the work you put in on projects like these, and mind blow is probably my single favorite youtube series of all time. now we just need to get jake to bring back LUT!
It was a very well put together video. However Not everybody has an hour 5 mins to watch a video about a Polaroid video
Ngl those hotdogs looked 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Incredible production, incredible story. I appreciate all you do, Kevin & PopSci team 👏
"people still don't download their burgers from the internet"
but if I could, I would!
You wouldn't steal a car!........
I'd download entire houses if i could. Maybe when 3D printing technology gets far enough then we will
@@IncendiaHL i would
@@derealized797just build a house yourself out of wood bro it's not that hard
@@nxtvim2521 I'm a carpenter. You know what wood costs these days?
This video is a blast ! What a journey! Congrats to everyone involved in the making of it !
After all of your time and hard work, when the only exposed tape came up blank, I had tears. To have such passion and dedication end without satisfaction of a successful Polavision video, I would have been devastated. I knew nothing about this tech when I sat down to watch, and by the end of it I had a version of me, 20 years before I existed, wanting to use this tech to capture my childhood. Thanks for your continued hard work educating us on old tech that is all but forgotten.
New subscriber !!! Amazing video!!! I grew up on Polaroid. My Dad was a film nut and when we were growing up we shot a lot of pictures on Polaroid cameras. We have so many family, vacation, pets and more subjects all on Polaroid film. Thanks for sharing your amazing journey and opening up a door for me to reconnect with the film of my youth.
This is such a great video, loved it from beginning to end
I totally forgot what I initially wanted to comment, but this guy is fascinating and amazing!! Thank you so much for highlighting him and all of his positive, hard-work!!
the sheer amount of work that went into this video is insane. This channel is so underrated.
This made me tear up, I'm so passionate about polaroid and analog mediums. Seeing doc share that passion so strongly and hearing the way he speaks about mistakes being what makes the medium special... it was a lot. Thanks for this amazing video
I'm glad he has a linotype when he said he asked what is analog. The linotype came to mind. Like one of the most crazy inventions man has ever made
I wish magnetic wire recording had worked out.
Bravo on your journey! The experience alone is priceless!
0:17 Proof that Danny DeVito is a time traveller
Or is he just immortal?
@@andreasu.3546 or a lifelong garden gnome
So lucky to have people like you and doc around. Thank you. Love it.
Wow! This is soo amazing! Thank you very much for that episode!
Someone like myself who appreciates vintage products of all kinds, I really appreciate your mind, heart and soul into allowing us to see true experience and love of preservation
This was a beautiful journey. What a fantastic video. Thank you.
Great video and I'm so glad everything came full circle for DOC and very thankful to have Polaroid instant film back and to be able to hold a real photograph
Kodak developed digital camera in 1975. Ignored the market and went bankrupt. Nobel effort in playing back the last Polavision tape, mate.
They myth that Kodak ignored digital and the market really needs to die. I don’t know how they “ignored” the market when they created the first consumer digital camera with the Apple QuickTake. If anything they invested far too much into digital technologies when they weren’t a semiconductor or optical company unlike Canon, Nikon or Sony. Their real failure was the poorly executed efforts to diversify their chemical business into pharmaceuticals and their repeated failure to integrate acquired companies into the business both of which Fujifilm were successful at. Not somehow missing digital photography.
I remember when our family got a Polariod, and how cool and exciting it was. But i never had heard of the Polavision.
What a journey, thanks for it sharing with us all.
How many times will I watch this? MANY MANY MANY more times. What a beautiful, exciting, heart breaking, inspiring and magical experience had and shared. Truly thankful to all involved!
Fascinating and extremely well-done video!
I was involved in the photo business at the time, and digital is what ultimately killed Polaroid. Scientific and engineering users burned through huge volumes of black and white Polaroid pack film for recording microscope and oscilloscope images. Even more massive though, was the fact that commercial photographers routinely shot _several_ Polaroids for each conventional film frame they captured, to check framing, focus and exposure.
Back in the day (~1992), I ran a digital imaging VAR and consultancy and did a study for a commercial client that shot thousands (and thousands) of product photos every year. Even with the $50,000 digital studio cameras in that era, we determined that each one would pay for itself in about 9 months, just from the savings in Polaroid film :-0
Polaroid made good use of their advanced color science in the early days of digital, but their corporate and R&D overhead was based on the enormous profits from their film business, and there was no way to transform the company quickly enough to overcome that. It was sad, the amount of deep knowledge lost was tragic.
(Huge props for the beyond-amazing honor of being the next to last person to ever have their photo taken on a 20x24 Polaroid!)
This video hit me emotionally. Very unexpected. I was always fascinated with my Uncles polaroid as a kid and wondered why he was the only one I knew that had one. Great tech.
The passion is palpable Kevin. This is art
Excellent video! However, I found it quite unfair to consider the iPhone as the first phone to incorporate a camera and make it portable. Especially coming from a channel that makes a point of showing technologies ahead of their time. The iPhone did not bring any disruptive technology, it just brought a new way of using resources that already existed.
All this work is remarkable, I was fascinated by the amount of information and the technical and poetic refinement of all the information brought to light here in this documentary.
Absolutely brilliant video. In my head I at one point heard "My name is Florian Kaps, but everybody calls me Doc"...
Fenomenal work there! What a beautiful way to see the way we interact with the world
23:22 That’s one of the coolest ideas I’ve ever heard.
After watching this video in it's entirety, the final minute is the most fulfilling conclusion, and exactly what your journey deserves. Thank you
I absolutely loved this... my dad was used to develop black and white and I learned developing and enlarging from him when I was 8 years old, and this video was so fascinating and nostalgic for me personally... thank you.
The fact he let doc spoke like 20min in the videos without interrupting was so interesting and fascinating. I was really into it
You and Doc have probably no idea how much this video matters. I got a GDR analogue camera for my birthday this year. It worked, the lenses had no scratches, it had a leather case with straps. I went on a journey to just take photos whenever I could. I switch between b/w and coloured film. Every film holds 35 photos right? Exactly 2 photos out of 105 photos were sharp. Everything else had double exposure, was not sharp or too long exposed. I was so freaking sad. But I was also so happy. Because sharp photos are not the goal here and I forgot that. The goal was to take a camera I have no idea to use correctly most of the times and just find stupid stuff to take photos of. And I did. I love my wonky photos. And you made me remind myself of that feeling. I gave up on that camera sind I the last set developed. I bought an adapter for a tripod. But that truly isn't why I love analogue so much!
Now I got my analogue camera from my parents. Got it as a teenager and had too much fun. Sadly I don't own any cables anymore and it seems the battery is dead. But if I can get it working again...there is a tiny hope that I can shoot some super analogue looking videos. You know, like your Polaroid killer 💚
One of the coolest products that Polaroid created was a 4x5 film back for 4x5 cameras. I could take a photo with a 4x5 camera, have a black and white photo, AND have a 4x5 negative to use for other prints. I worked at a small camera store at the time and could check out equipment to use. However all supplies came out of my own pocket. The result was so much fun, I ended up purchasing several film packages to do more shooting.
Ha, both you and Our Own Devices put out videos on this bad boy within a day of each other. Spooky.
This was so beautiful, Great job Kevin.
44:29 - I enjoy that when the voiceover is talking about "digital photography", you're showing an analog film camera. :-D
omg 1 HOUR i'm excited, it's evening here and just about time, gotta watch instantly thx man :-D
I was scared that Doc would be just another startup entrepreneur. But he seems so genuinely in love with all his work
Excellent video, great stories. I love it.
that made me feel things. analog things. fantastic work, thank you
i was a teenager in the late 1970's and i saw this advertised in the U.K.
I think they must've been selling them off. I remember saving to buy it.
I had great fun with it. It did work and seemed very high-tech.
I think I made about nine 'movies' with it.
Looking back, the quality was not great and sometimes you could see processing residue on the film when it was playing back.
But at times like Christmas, it would be brought out to Great fanfare and a little movie event ensued.
The quote "marketing is what you do when your product is no good" is what we learned he understood when this product was finally produced. The original Polaroid cameras were amazing!
I’ve never been anything but impressed with every video you’ve put out, so incredibly good
This is awesome! Thank you for making this. I myself am a fan of analog, I take pictures on an old 1947 Goldy Objectif Mystique camera, it makes beautiful pictures on 120 film. I have some 620 cameras I want to use as well, as well as get into videography with an old analog camera, but that's farther out.
This is amazing. Strong work, I was grinning the whole time.
Wow, this is really good. I can't believe I watched this whole thing. Good job man.👍
Great documentary, thank you for putting this together - so great this content is free to watch for film nerds like myself, inspiring to see passion like this out there!
A wonderful and exciting adventure! I received a Polavision system for Christmas in 1977 or '78. Sadly, as you note, the developed film was unstable so, when trying to re-view my mini-masterpieces some ten years later, all that remained was a set of films with a broad opaque stripe obliterating most of every image. A shame the film technology wasn't better as, if I remember rightly, the engineering of the camera and player was very robust.
I was a 2000's kid. I didn't experience this stuff the same way everyone else did. I was given "leftovers" if you will. I grew up watching VHS and playing Super nintendo or Sega genesis. We couldn't afford new things so I got to play with all of that. I loved it. It never occured to me how different all the new stuff was. I just knew that What I was viewing, and experiencing was awesome.
We would go to garage sales and find VHS tapes, Old board games, Clothes, Furniture, Books from way before my time like goosebumps, etc. I never cared about having the new stuff, It was always about the experience. I got my first polaroid when I was 10. I loved that thing. We got used film for it at first, then new film when it was back in re-production. I collected polaroids of every sort. I eventually was gifted on my 14th birthday, some 70 sonic the hedgehog books that where compounded from an inmate at the jail my uncle worked at, and a 8mm Polaroid handheld film camera. That shit was amazing to me. I sold it all when I was 17 thinking I was to old for it and needed to move on in my life. i regret that. I dont regret giving my Polaroid Camera's to a friend tho. I tried starting up my collection again but it became to expensive. This was a great video. It was anostalgia trip.
Oh btw Yes I listened to cassette tapes in my moms car as a kid and I do listen to Vynil.
Doc is awesome and so inspirational. I highly respect people who have such passions and knowledge. And he sounds like Arnold as a bonus! Kevin this s a unique and incredible video, Thank you.
18:29 TRUST YOUR SENSES USE YOUR F-ING BRAIN. I had to pause that to see if it said "F-ING BARN" 😂😂😂😂😂
Love this channel. Give this guy a raise!
I clicked the video expecting a fun short exploration of an obsolete format.
I came away over an hour later, touched at this love letter to Edwin Land and Florian "Doc" Kaps.
There's something. You have something, its hard to explain but i love the way you narrate your videos. Is very poetic and this one was really moving. I was on the verge of crying by the end of the video and i can't even explain why. You are a true artist, i wish you the best and keep on with the hard work
This was a wild journey. I am proud of you, my friend.
Here is some additional trivia about self-developing motion picture film:
In the early 1960s, the writer Walter Tevis was interested in this idea and wrote it into his science fiction novel "The Man Who Fell to Earth". As a man from outer space, Thomas Newton brought self-developing motion picture film to earth, and became a millionaire from this invention through his "World Enterprises Corporation." This would have been a more advanced version of Polavision (though only fiction). This part of the story did not make it into the film with David Bowie.
*"teach me how to dance this" Zorba-vibed me*
Thank you Kevin for introducing me to Doc, what a guy, what a story,. Nxt time I in Vienna I must go to Supersense and pay homage.
Great Video! A very human touch! Great work guys!
I am in awe of our ancestors. Looks like Doc and you are too. Kindred spirits.
People dreamed of tech in our hands that did everything long before "Iphones." AND Ipods. They were late to the party and charged you more for the privilege of owning their junk. I had PDAs that actually could play games on a color screen AND play MP3s at the same time, had a camera too. Granted, that junk was sold separately.
55:33 - I enjoy the symmetry of preserving digitally for everyone to access a thing given to you by someone who is working to preserve analog media for in-person use.
I believe both methods are absolutely vital and equally important.
Keeping physical relics, and keeping them fully functional, with new innovations necessary (the hand creation of new peel-apart instant film, for example,) is necessary so people can actually *experience* these bits of history.
But preserving things digitally so they can be accessible to *EVERYONE*, even if not in their original form, is also vital, so people can *LEARN* about these bits of history.
And Kevin, you are doing vital work in this. This feature-documentary-length video, accessible to all for free, is preserving this knowledge and history for generations to come.
So... Futurefuels in Batesville, AR used to be Eastman Chemical. It's pretty much a splinter of Eastman Chemical, including employees. There are still Eastman branded binders and documentation around the site.
I know its not the right company, but I wonder if they might have the right reagent recipe. They do make small production runs of chemicals other than biodiesel, so it might be worth a shot to contact them. Who knows, the chemical reagent recipe might be sitting on some dusty shelf waiting to revive some polavision tapes.
I'm not crying It's just tears of how AWESOME THAT IS.
I teared up at the end when they took that large format Polaroid picture of you.
Now that is a rabbit hole. Well done.
What an absolutely awesome video. Thank you for making this and sharing it with us.. I'm truly fascinated with this retro tech about photography and videography.
This is a wonderful documentary on analog devices whose only flaw is that it starts off with one of the worst analog devices of the 20th century, Polavision. Even without videotape, the poor quality, short run time, lack of audio, and proprietary player compared to the already existing Super-8 format were sufficient to doom Polavision.
Amazing video absolutely loved it
Wonderful video! More like this please!
I never realized you can play master cuts, that's pretty cool!
From liner notes and vintage ebay auctions I also noticed that a lot of masters were done on real-to-real at the time.
Very good documentary. I will gave to visit the museum in Vienna.
This is a fucking awesome awesome project Kevin. Top 10 videos on yt.
What was it Billy Joel's father said? "Vienna waits for you."