Polaroid Pogo Limited Edition Moleskine : Printing Mad.
So I was reading a David du Chemin book – within the frame – the other day and learnt that on his photo adventures around the world, he usually carries with him a tiny polaroid pogo print to make instant prints as gifts to locals whenever he asks to shoot an impromptu portrait of someone in a foreign country. It uses Zink (Zero Ink) technology that can print on the go via a USB cable attached to the digital camera. Very mindful of my coming 3.5 week grand tour around Asia coming next month, I thought it was a good idea to invest in a pocketable printer, but never really thought too hard about it….
… until I saw the limited edition Pogo printer that comes with a custom limited Moleskine… drool. I had to buy it, how could I not, right?
Yes, I am also a huge, huge fan of moleskines, and until very recently am totally fascinated with their custom editions. There are all kinds of amazing custom jobs, anything ranging from a commissioned musuem notebook through to bespoke company gifts with special embossed logos, moleskines are hot; moleskines with custom jobs on them are just straight fire. I recommend having a look on their official website here.
I found this gem while I was browsing at the Photographer’s Gallery bookshop, not cheap at £80 and it is part of the Pola Premium put together by The Impossible GmbH, an organisation which is working very closely with Polaroid to bring back the vintage instant film again. While I was at Photographer’s Gallery, I also invested in some reconditioned polaroid film too , the 125i Silk to be exact…. even though I don’t have a polaroid camera to use the film on, just the thought of owning a piece of history (in beautiful packaging nonetheless…) was nice to know.
Right then, on to the product itself – so the pogo printer is meant to bring the instant feedback of the polaroid to the digital photographer. It plugs into any digital camera with a USB plug and is PictBridge compatible and is suppose to then print your photographs instantly. This particular package which I have bought is as I said, a special Pola Premium edition. The moleskine which comes with it is really lush. Intended to be an album (foldable Japanese style) where you can stick your Zink prints on to keep forever. This special edition comes with an Edwin Land belly band and an ultra cool blue Pola Premium embossed logo on the hard cover. Ohh… I love it. That’s another moleskine to add to my collection. (next is the national gallery little redbook) As for the printer itself, well it certainly is portable alright, it measures about the same as a 6×4 print, and is made of metal so it feels solid, but rather light as well. The battery takes about 6 hours to charge fully, and when it is fully charged only makes between 8 to 11 prints.
Anyway, so I fired up the first few 2×3 prints… and I’m afraid to say that results aren’t stunning. Though they are comparable to the quality of the digital photo sticker things you find in Asia… but it is definitely not ‘photographic’ quality and no where near a real polaroid (not that this was ever intended to be). Although, conceptually speaking, the results are good enough for the sheer portability and instant gratification of it. And when I say instant, boy is it 21st century instant. The printer also communicates via bluetooth and that means that I can send any photo from my blackberry (or any bluetooth device) to the printer and it would print instantly… no wires, magic. So what I did was open up a picture via my internet browser on my blackberry, surf on to an image which I wanted and then sent it to the pogo printer. Two minutes later, I had a 2×3 sticker ready to go into my notebook. That’s magic.
Anyway, it’s a cool device, and the sheer instant feedback has got my creative juices all flowing as to what I can do with these prints. While it may not be technically perfect; the prints do carry a certain look about it, albeit unsharp, with vertical banding lines running down one side, etc, but for some sort of small scale photo project, say a bespoke moleskine photobook of some sort, it could prove to be enticing. So anyway, that’s the seed of an inspiration…. for now. I’ll put the moleskine to good use and hopefully in combo with the pogo printer, make a little print project fit to entertain.
Watch this space….. oh and if you have been iffy about the pogo, I personally recommend it… but with a warning. Firstly, the battery life sucks because you need to recharge after 10 prints (because Zink uses alot of heat to ‘bring out the picture’ from the paper) and don’t expect the technical quality of the print itself to be a tack sharp 2×3 c-type print, because it just won’t be. It’s a fun device, it can make instant sticker prints which can go anywhere and that’s why I like it.
Tags: moleskine, pogo, printing
This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Blog, Camera Equipment, right. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.