Printed digital photos a Snap
By Canadian Packaging staff
General Coding & Labeling Polaroid The Snap Polaroid digital camera Zero Ink printinging technology ZinkPolaroid offers printed digital photos with its no-ink print technology via the 10MP The Snap camera.
Once upon a time, people gathered ’round a hand-held photo album to view images of the people met or places seen by some family member or friend. But with the advent of the digital camera and cell phone technologies, the printed photograph has seemingly gone the way of the dinosaur.
But the hold the phone! While the original dinosaur may be gone, it remains alive in a modern style and format.
Polaroid, the undisputed king of the instant photograph, is back with a new type of digital camera—The Snap—that combines instant prints with modern digital technology.
Looking every bit like a standard digital camera, The Snap features Polaroid’s ink-free Zero Ink (Zink) printing technology.
While the camera will require ‘film’ in the form of paper for the photograph’s base, it will not require ink cartridges, toner or ribbons.
So how does it work?
The key is in the paper. It’s a paper that comes with the colors cyan, yellow and magenta in a crystal form placed underneath a protective polymer overcoat.
The printer inside The Snap heats the paper to activate and colorize the crystals, and in less than a minute—minus the now unnecessary hand-shaking to dry the photo—you can hold in your hands a full-color, 2×3-inch, smudge-free photo.
Go ahead and touch it. It’s dry. You can stick it right into a photo album… OR, you can peel off the backing to expose a sticky side and slap it on a wall as a sticker.
The Snap allows the photographer to create photographic images (do this before you shoot) in color, black and white, or to go retro and create it in Polaroid-style, which Canadian Packaging assumes means it has a ‘white border’.
Using the ‘photo booth’ mode, a photographer can shoot six photographs in 10 seconds. As well, since ‘selfless’ are still a thing, self-shooters can still hold the camera in front of their mugs, or set the camera’s timer so sellers (self takers?) can finally have an image taken from farther than arms length.
Polaroid is selling its Zink photo paper for a respectable US$29.99 for 50 sheets, while The Snap itself is a 10MP digital camera able to handle a Micro SD card up to 32GB for saving and transferring, and is expected to be available in black, white, red or blue for US$99 later this year.
Advertisement
