Nowadays we either look at the camera's LCD (guilty) or at 72dpi image on a laptop, LCD computer screen for proofing when shooting.

Also for image editing

When digital started we where so worried about "getting:" the best monitor to do this and of course to edit images, I remember once having a laptop connected to a Barco in my office... but now I see posts here asking: "if the iMac screen is good enough".

I for one miss Polaroid proofing!

Yes, I too hate things getting easier and better.

I hated Polaroid proofing. 90 seconds to wait for the thing to come up while you sit there.....waiting.......waiting..... "Oops, we need to cut the glare on that one thing in the background." Change the light. Pop another Polaroid......waiting....waiting.....

I love progress.

Not me. I was able to get rid of the full size refrigerator I used to store film in. I figured out it was costing me about $200/year to operate that non Energy Star compliant monster.

Scotti

I bought a glass front Fugi film frig when the lab shut down years back. We use it for soft drinks and beer. I better hook it up to it's own wind turbine to justify keeping it around. We actually still shoot some film all the way up to 8x10 and keep it in there, but it's hard to move the beer out of the way to get to it.

I will only miss type 55. I used to shoot it in a Michaelangelo pin hole camera, scan the neg and pop out 24x30's.

While waiting for the NEC 30" to go spectra, the iMac posts started sounding pretty darn good.

Gotta go... big beer reduction weekend at the Fugi frig!

I think you got a fake. Most of the authentic ones say "Fuji" on the front

Babaluee's been in the frig. again!

But did you ever get tired of explaining the difference in what they saw on the Polaroid and what they would get in actual film?

"Well you see Mr. Art Director, Polaroid is more contrasty than transparency film, and you can't really trust the colors, especially that one on the prop that you really want to stand out, so you'll just have to trust me that it will look fine when we get the film back in two days."

Sorry Franklin, My beef with Polaroid was when I'd shoot the perfect subject expression on Poli and then couldn't get them to recreate it on film. Or fleeting location light. With digital I may have a final image. And that mess. When I worked at Mattel we had trash cans full of Poli peels every day.

I love polaroid...

There is Fuji Instant . . . and it is good.

The proof is in the print (or whatever the final will be, might be a web page).

Everything else is just a transitional preview. The Polaroid analogy is a good one. We had to visually and mentally adjust what we saw to what we pretty much knew we'd get on the chrome. The Polaroid was rarely the final product.

I simply don't understand the folks who look down on "Chimping" (if that's the correct term) on the LCD. Its damn useful like a Polaroid but no more or less the reality of the capture (especially if you shoot Raw, then its a bold face lie). It would be nice if the camera manufacturers would improve this disconnect. But its still useful, I just don't depend on it 100% (or sometimes 50%).

My NEC display (which is pretty darn accurate in terms of color management) along with good profiles and soft proofing can't show me what a print will look like in terms of a lot of things. But its pretty good at predicting things for me and I still have to translate. A chrome never looked like a print either. An emissive display will NEVER appear like a reflective print until we break the laws of physics, and at such a time, I'd rather have an anti gravity machine or transporter.

The nice thing about Polaroids (or Fuji Instant) is that you know the film will look better. It has really been more of a reassurance than a predictor. Same thing with RAW shooting, and JPEG previews on a monitor.

With all the talk about great monitors, be it the old Radius like I used in college (sometimes), the Sony CRT, an EIZO, or the latest NEC; all of these are simply previews. There can be a tendency to believe too much of them, especially when wondering how a print will appear.

There is no such thing as capture once, then output everywhere. Each specific output form must be adjusted/optimized separately, and none of them will look exactly the same. Clients rarely understand this aspect of imaging.

Even very large companies for whom I have done work are often not using profiled and calibrated displays. So I could have the best monitor on the planet, adjust everything perfectly, and then someone down the line looking at it in their poorly lit office on their in-budget monitor can quite likely make a comment about colour.

Soft proofing is cool, and I have been using it for many years. It does speed things up over sending a hard copy proof. However, a hard copy proof is still a better indicator, and a press proof is better than that, but only when the client allots the time to do those things. On really important colour critical work for big clients, these things do happen.

I guess if anyone missed Polaroid that much, or had a client who did, you could shoot tethered and send the shot to a little 4x6 dye sub printer for proofs. At least that way you could finesse your printer's settings enough to reproduce more accurately than a Polaroid, and it would take less time. Less material ends up in the trash that way, too.

In the news media, we haven't had a stitch of photo paper of any kind pass through our hands in at least five years, except for the occasional big print for the walls.

Whatever time savings realized by the Polaroid to digital switch have long been lost to ADs staring at laptop screens, backing up files, etc...Still, wouldn't want to go back.