Instant-photo enthusiasts worry in post-Polaroid era

Polaroid is closing factories that produce instant film.

BOSTON (AP) — When Jerry Conlogue heard Polaroid will soon stop producing its instant film, he worried about his mummies.

Conlogue uses Polaroid film when he travels deep into the Peruvian jungle to take X-ray photographs of ancient mummies so he doesn’t have to lug cumbersome developing chemicals. Now he and other enthusiasts who use the film for art or specialized industrial photography are left wondering where they’ll go to stay stocked.

“We’re incredibly despondent,” said Conlogue, co-director of the Bioanthropology Research Institute at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., where researchers frequently visit remote sites to capture X-ray images of mummies. “I don’t really feel that there is going to be a replacement for it, which is a real problem.”

Concord, Mass.-based Polaroid Corp. announced last week that it plans to close factories in Massachusetts as well as Mexico and the Netherlands that make film formats for industrial and consumer uses.

Polaroid instant film will be available in stores into next year, the company said. Meanwhile, Polaroid — which stopped making instant cameras over the past couple years — is seeking a partner to acquire licensing rights, in hopes that another firm will continue making the instant film and keep limited supplies available.

Polaroid introduced its first instant camera in 1948, just as the baby boom got started and parents were looking for new ways to take photos of their kids. Film packs contained the chemicals for developing images inside the camera, and photos emerged from the camera in less than a minute.

Now, some camera buffs who still use Polaroids for fun are trying to buy as much as they can.

Joe Howansky, a 23-year-old professional photo technician from Queens who has shown Polaroid shots at art galleries in New York City, said he bought $800 worth of Polaroid film at a discount warehouse club after he learned last Friday that Polaroid planned to stop producing its film.

Howansky now has enough to snap 800 Polaroid shots. While he also uses digital cameras that can yield an image within a second after snapping a photo, Howansky likes Polaroid film because he finds its nostalgic quirkiness gets his creative juices flowing.

“It has an intangible quality that fits with walking down the street, and I see something cool, and snap a photo of it,” he said.

Although Polaroid instant film may seem an anachronism in an age of digital photography, it’s still widely used for industrial applications.

For example, in medicine, dermatologists use Polaroid film printed with grid patterns to help measure shrinkage in scars over time, said Michael Phelan, a sales manager at Calumet Photographic in Cambridge who works with industrial photography customers.

“There is no substitute for it, and there is no other product out there that is a viable alternative,” said Phelan, who said his store has received several calls in recent days from customers worried about Polaroid film supplies.