Polaroid 600 Review

The Polaroid 600 extreme was an instant photograph-processing camera invented by the Polaroid Company. The Extreme version was a revised version aimed for the higher end of the consumer market. It was a non-AF model with a close-up lens, controlled by a close-up lens lever on one side. The range was 1.2 m to infinity for distant photographs, and 0.6 m to 1.2 m for close-up photographs. It had a "lighten / darken" control, which acted like an exposure control to make photographs lighter or darker. It also had a flash override control, which allowed one to take photographs without the flash. This camera takes the Polaroid 600 series film, which consists of a pack of ten photos.

This product was one of the best and most successful at one time that is well worth getting if you can afford the film cartridge. The Polaroid 600 is still widely used today by many professionals who want the ease of an instant photograph.

Discontinued

The instant photograph was a unique product feature of the Polaroid Company and they had the sole market share. It was the best monopoly any company could have had. There were no annual research costs, no re-tooling costs, and an automated factory could produce the film with very little manual labour. Instead of the product becoming cheaper and widely accessible to the public, paradoxically, it discontinued.

Polaroid packaged the power pack and the film within a single cartridge, which had the effect of tying in the customer for the power requirements -- and increasing profits --- but in the long term made the cost of cartridges more expensive and less competitive with emerging inkjet printer technologies. A better solution would have been to create a new design of camera that used standard AA size batteries in a separate battery compartment, and then sell cheaper film cartridges.

Polaroid Models

This camera is an all-plastic mass-produced product with an average build quality similar to that of a plastic disposable camera. The profits came from selling the ingenious film cartridge, which were immense at one time.

Polaroid made many cameras that were similar looking with similar features; however, they divide into two broad categories of "AF" models, and "Non-AF" models.

The following is a list of AF models, which do not have the flash override button or the close-up lens control.

• 600 AF
• 636 AF
• OneStep AF
• OneStep AF SE

The following is a list of Non-AF models.

• 600 extreme
• 637
• OneStep
• OneStep Express
• 600 CL
• JobPro 2
• 600 Business Edition 2
• Cool Cam

Lens

Shutter Release

Close-Up Control

Cost / eBay

These cameras are no longer in production and therefore over time there will be fewer cameras available resulting in an increase in price.

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