Polaroid has just announced improvements to their black and white “600” film chemistry.
The new B&W 600 frames (which now come with the standard white, fancy black, and the novel grey borders) are promised to have “richer detail” and “lighter contrast.”
Since it was founded as Impossible Project (history: analog.cafe/r/a-brief-hist…), Polaroid continuously altered its emulsion, batch by batch.
Polaroid’s ongoing improvements are usually incremental and hard to notice; the most significant one thus far (for colour film) is documented here: analog.cafe/r/polaroid-ori…
Today’s B&W 600 upgrade is meant to be another significant step in bettering the film’s dynamic range, which I estimated earlier to be around 3.5 stops (making it one of the hardest films to expose correctly): analog.cafe/r/polaroid-ban…. Hopefully, the new frames beat that number, which is paramount to creating better images, esp. for new photographers.
I’m also curious to see what they meant by “richer detail” (whether it’s stronger microcontrast on the emulsion level, improvements to the plastic guard, or both). I’ll place an order as soon as my bank account recovers. 😅
P.S.: I’ve contacted Polaroid about upgrades to their SX-70 chemistry and will update this thread as soon as I hear back.
Jennifer, the Team Leader for Film & Chemistry at Polaroid, has added a few technical details on Instagram:
1. The new chemistry includes colour stability improvements that ensure that the frames remain black and white, instead of brown and white as they age. Some examples of this effect can be seen in my review of the SX-70 film: analog.cafe/r/polaroid-ban…
2. The ratio of TBHQ (or tertiary butylhydroquinone), a black and white developer that was first talked about at length when Polaroid released their Reclaimed Blue frames (analog.cafe/r/polaroid-rec…) has increased. In turn, this appears to have bumped the micro-contrast/sharpness of the photographs (this answers my question about the new chemistry above).
3. Further tweaks seem to have dramatically improved the overall contrast ratio/extended the dynamic range of film. As you can see in the side-by-side example posted below, the new chemistry (left) shows greater shadow *and* highlight detail. In short, this means it’ll be easier to avoid over- and under-exposing Polaroid film, which is known to be the greatest issue with the emulsion.
All of the above is very good news. I’m glad we’ve got more context about the improvements; looking forward to running my own tests with this film!
Dmitri May 8, ‘24
Dmitri May 8, ‘24
Dmitri May 13, ‘24