Instant photography

Instant photography or best known as Polaroid were invented in 1947. The reason why it is called Polaroid is that the company first launched instant camera was the Polaroid Corporation. This huge success of the company also named instant photography.

So, how does the instant photography work?

It is really simple:

Either it works with magic or

Little educated ants develop the film within the camera.  

No, actually none of these two possibilities can be true. As someone who knows nothing about chemistry, it is magic. But with a little explanation it all gets very clear:

Instant photography is almost the same as a regular camera film, with just few additional elements. When taking a picture, a usual film captures patterns of light using special chemicals. So, the shutter opens and closes for a fraction of a second and the light bursts through and strikes the film.

A black-and-white film, consists of a plastic base ground and is coated with particles of silver compound (layer). Color film, on the other hand, has three layers: one that is sensitive to blue light, one to green and one to red light. When light strikes on these compounds, the sensitive grains at each layer react to light of that color.

To turn this result into a picture, the film has to be developed. For this, 4 different dye developers that contain dye couplers react with one of the color layers in the film.

The developed color film has a negative image, which is kind of a problem, as white areas may appear black and vice versa and all this with different colors. . In slide film, the two dyes couplers that attach to the unexposed area combine to form the color captured at the exposed layer.

The instant-camera developing process combines colors in the same basic way as slide film, but the developing chemicals are already present in the film itself.