The Polaroid Mini Portrait is a fixed-focus, dual-lens pack-film camera designed specifically for professional portrait and identification photography. Introduced around 1980, it was sold not as a consumer product but through Polaroid's professional and commercial channels, targeting applications such as ID-card production, passport photography, school portrait studios, and similar volume portrait work. The camera's defining feature is its dual-lens design: two lenses mounted side by side expose the pack-film print simultaneously, producing two identical small portrait images on a single frame — each approximately wallet-sized. This made it efficient for ID and credential photography where duplicate images were routinely required. The Mini Portrait used Polaroid's Type 100 peel-apart pack film, drawing on the same film supply as the broader professional Polaroid pack-film ecosystem.
Reference
Find film for your Polaroid Mini Portrait
Recommended film stocks for the pack-film format your camera takes.
**Dual-lens alignment** - inspect both lenses for fungus, haze, or physical damage. Even minor misalignment between the two lenses will produce uneven images within the same frame. Check that both lens elements are clear.
**Fixed focus calibration** - the working distance is narrow by design; if the camera has been dropped or the lens mount disturbed, images will be soft. Test with a measured subject at the correct portrait distance.
**Close-focus stand** - the camera was often used with a dedicated Polaroid stand accessory that held it at the correct subject distance. Finding a complete kit with the stand is preferable to the body alone for practical use.
**Battery compartment** - check for corrosion on AA contacts. The internal battery is standard, but corroded contacts are the most common failure on institutional cameras that sat in storage.
**Electronic shutter and meter** - same CdS and electronic shutter architecture as the standard 200-series pack-film cameras; diagnose with a fresh battery and a known-good film pack before attributing problems to the meter or shutter.
**Rollers** - clean thoroughly before use. Institutional cameras often have heavily contaminated rollers from extended use without maintenance.
About this camera
A dual-lens professional pack-film camera purpose-built for close-distance portrait and ID photography.
Key Specs
Frequently asked questions
What film does the Polaroid Mini Portrait use?
The Polaroid Mini Portrait shoots pack-film film.
What battery does the Polaroid Mini Portrait take?
The Polaroid Mini Portrait uses a 4x AA (internal; not film-embedded) battery.
What lens mount does the Polaroid Mini Portrait have?
The Polaroid Mini Portrait uses the fixed mount.
What light meter does the Polaroid Mini Portrait use?
**Scarcity** - the Mini Portrait was not widely distributed through consumer channels; expect to find it only through specialist vintage-camera dealers or estate sales from institutional sources rather than casual thrift finds.
Field
Value
Format
Polaroid Type 100 pack film (peel-apart; ~3.25 x 4.25 in frame; two images per exposure)
Lens
Dual fixed lenses; close-focus optimised (~50–90 cm working distance)
Focus
Fixed (optimised for close portrait distance)
Shutter
Electronic programmed auto
Meter
CdS cell; auto
Flash
Built-in or dedicated flash unit (model variant-dependent)
ISO range
75 - 3000 (manual ISO dial, same as standard pack-film cameras)
Battery
4x AA (internal)
Weight
~ (unverified)
Years
~1980 - ~1990
History
The Mini Portrait emerged from Polaroid's professional product division, which maintained a parallel line of tools alongside the consumer range. By the late 1970s, the peel-apart Type 100 pack-film format was well established in professional and quasi-professional contexts — the 180 and 195 served photographers who wanted manual control, while the 600 SE served field journalists and studio operators who needed a reliable automatic with high-quality optics. The Mini Portrait addressed a different professional niche: high-volume portrait and ID work where the priority was speed, consistency, and duplicates rather than optical flexibility.
The dual-lens design was not unique to Polaroid — similar dual-lens instant cameras existed in the broader professional instant market — but the Mini Portrait packaged it in the familiar peel-apart ecosystem that professional users were already equipped to handle. The camera was typically sold as a kit with a dedicated close-focus stand or copy stand accessory that standardised the subject distance, ensuring consistent framing and focus across large batches of sitters.
Production continued through the 1980s. The decline of peel-apart film in professional markets and the rise of digital ID systems in the early 1990s made the Mini Portrait's use case increasingly narrow, and it was discontinued as the Type 100 ecosystem contracted.
Why It Matters
The Mini Portrait represents a less-discussed segment of Polaroid's history: the professional and institutional market. While the SX-70, the OneStep, and the Spectra dominate the cultural memory of Polaroid, a parallel ecosystem of professional tools — the 180, the 195, the 600 SE, and cameras like the Mini Portrait — operated in workplaces, government offices, and studios throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
The dual-lens design solved a specific operational problem: ID photography required duplicate images at each sitting, and producing them with a single-lens camera meant two separate exposures, two separate peel-and-time cycles, and two opportunities for inconsistency. The Mini Portrait collapsed that workflow into a single shutter press. In contexts such as issuing employee badges, student ID cards, or club membership credentials — all common applications — this was a meaningful efficiency gain.
For collectors and current photographers, the Mini Portrait is an unusual piece of Polaroid history: clearly purposeful and professional in its design, but almost entirely absent from the cultural narrative of Polaroid as an art and consumer medium. Working examples are relatively scarce because they were used hard in institutional settings and rarely preserved with care.
Sample Photographers / Notable Use
The Mini Portrait and its variants were standard equipment for ID-card and credential photography in US government agencies, universities, and large corporations through the 1980s. The instant duplicate print was operationally critical in environments where separate photo labs were not available.
School portrait studios used similar dual-lens Polaroid tools for wallet-print production, where two copies per student were the standard deliverable.
Law enforcement agencies and border posts used professional Polaroid pack-film cameras — including close-focus portrait models — for booking and identification documentation through the 1980s, before digital capture systems became standard.
Christopher Bonanos, Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012) - institutional and professional applications of Polaroid's pack-film platform in the 1970s and 1980s.