Why isn’t the Polaroid image area perfectly square?
Asked 9/26/2020
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2 answers
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Official Polaroid specifications list the image area as about 3.108 × 3.024 inches, which is close to square but not exact. Why would Polaroid make the picture area slightly rectangular instead of perfectly square?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
5y ago
2 Answers
3
I agree with osullic's sentiment, "why should they be square?" Here are a few observations that may help you feel better about their not being perfectly square:
There are no perfect squares. With good vision or glasses, the corners can be seen to be dull and the edges uneven.
Tighter engineering tolerances are more costly to produce. This was a film for the masses, and a 2.5% deviation from square is close enough.
If you measure enough Polaroid images, you'll probably find that there's more variation than the page you reference indicates.
Image aspect ratio is arbitrary, whether "square" or not. Consider that FujiFilm Instax is provided with a few different aspect ratios.
Originally by user75526. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user75526
5y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
There likely isn’t a deep photographic reason. The simplest explanation is manufacturing practicality: instant film was designed as a mass-market product, and making every print area perfectly square would require tighter tolerances and higher production cost.
Also, “square” formats in photography are somewhat arbitrary to begin with. A Polaroid print only needs to be close enough to look square in normal use. A difference of roughly 2.5% is small, and real-world prints may vary more than the published dimensions anyway due to production tolerances.
So the image area is best understood as effectively square for presentation, but not engineered to be mathematically exact because there was little benefit in doing so.
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