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Old 02.09.2008, 01:45 AM   #10
m1rr0r dash
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m1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's assesm1rr0r dash kicks all y'all's asses
...i honestly don't think the availability of polaroid film will diminish at all. film, whether it's polaroid or 35mm, is manufactured in 40' or 50' wide rolls - like textiles - containing thousands and thousands of square yards of film. unlike fabric though, it isn't sold by the yard, but by the millimeter. 35mm for still, 70mm or wider for movies, and then some 4x5 and 8x10 sheet film, and for polaroid - a little square with a paper border and a pack of chemicals built in. this allows film manufacturers to produce 2 or 3 large rolls in one go (several years worth of stock, even for a large distributor) and then freeze them. they can then change up the machinery to manufacture a similar batch of another film stock. whenever they need to "make" more of a specific format film stock they sell - say 35mm rolls with 36 frames on a roll - they slice a piece off of the 40' roll in storage, cut that into 35mm wide strips, punch the sprocket holes, and load the strips into the little metal canisters you buy at the store.

eastman kodak did not even announce anything to the public in 1993 or 1994 when they made the final batch of technical pan film. when they announced in 2004 that they would discontinue selling the product, they admitted that they hadn't even made any in around ten years. had the company instead decided to just cook up a new batch, the public would have assumed that production had never stopped.

the same is true of polaroid. just because they shut down the factory does not necessarily mean that the film itself will not be sold anymore. it could easily be on the market from polaroid for another several years, and at least for another decade from places like ebay.
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