C41
Kodak Portra 400
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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The Polaroid Square Shooter 2 is a consumer-grade folding pack-film camera introduced in 1971 as part of Polaroid's 80-series line. It uses the same 100-type pack film as the premium 100-series cameras but strips the rangefinder and fast lens down to a fixed-zone-focus f/14.6 lens that is acceptably sharp from roughly 4 feet to infinity. The electric-eye selenium meter handles exposure automatically; there is no manual override. The resulting camera is simple enough for children to operate and was priced and marketed accordingly.
Reference
Recommended film stocks for the pack-film format your camera takes.
C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
View profile →BW
Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
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About this camera
Polaroid's entry-level 1971 pack-film camera: fixed-focus, electric-eye auto exposure, produced for the family snapshot market.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 100-type pack film (3.25 x 4.25 in) |
| Lens | ~100mm f/14.6, fixed zone focus |
| Years | 1971 - ~ |
| Shutter | ~1s - 1/125s, electronic leaf |
| Meter | Selenium cell, fully automatic |
| Focus | Fixed zone focus (~4 ft to infinity) |
| Battery | 2x AA |
Polaroid segmented its pack-film line throughout the late 1960s and 1970s into a premium tier (100-series, with rangefinders and Zeiss-sourced lenses) and a mass-market tier (80-series, with fixed focus and simpler optics). The original Square Shooter appeared before 1971; the Square Shooter 2 was a revision of that model with minor mechanical updates. The name "Square Shooter" referred to the square proportions of the camera body, not to any special film format - the prints are the same 3.25x4.25-inch rectangle as all pack-film cameras. Production continued into the mid-1970s before Polaroid consolidated its lineup around the SX-70 and later the 600 series.
The Square Shooter 2 is primarily of interest as a piece of industrial design history and as an inexpensive entry to pack-film photography. It represents the bottom rung of the pack-film ladder: everything the premium 250 offered minus the rangefinder, minus the fast lens, minus the manual controls - but at a price point that put instant photography in American middle-class households in the early 1970s. For working film photographers today, it is a low-cost way to shoot the remaining expired pack-film stock or limited revival materials, with the understanding that critical focus is not possible. The fully automatic exposure with no override makes it frustrating in tricky light.
Polaroid Square Shooter 2
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