Instant cameras have gone through a great shrinking since they first started appearing around 75 years ago – and they don’t get much smaller than the Polaroid Go Gen 3. Or do they?
Almost small enough to fit in your gob and weighing just under 252g without any film loaded, Polaroid says the Go Gen 3 is the world’s smallest instant camera, but that’s only if you don’t include the old second-gen version, which was actually even smaller.
Still, the Polaroid Go Gen 3 is hardly a chonker, so you can still take it out and about on a whim and not get hacked off with having to carry it. Besides, those few extra millimetres have allowed for some improvements over its predecessor.
Polaroid has overhauled the lens system, so you now get a longer 42mm equivalent focal length, which will mean you’ll want to get closer to your subject, while the aperture settings of f/14.4 and f/32 should result in sharper snaps. The shutter speed is also faster and the built-in flash is more powerful.
Some stuff stays the same, so you still get the selfie mirror, self-timer and double exposure mode, plus a rechargeable battery that should let you take about 120 shots before it needs more juice.
It takes Polaroid Go film, so the pictures the camera spits out are a quarter of the size of old-fashioned ones Outkast sang about in 2003. That means you can tuck them inside your phone case, which is crucial if you want a member of Gen Z to consider buying one instead of stocking up on Coco Pop flavour vapes.
You get eight shots per cartridge (Polaroid sells them in double packs) and they still take 10 or 15 mins to develop, but you can immortalise your analogue snaps digitally by scanning and sharing them with the Polaroid app.
The Polaroid Go Gen 3 is available now for $90/£80, with various bundles that include accessories and packs of film also on offer.
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