Compact

We seldom review point-and-shoot digicams unless they include features that are novel or potentially interesting in some way. The recently-released Polaroid Two camera qualified by being the first digicam we've seen with a built-in printer. Ten-sheet packs of 76 x 49 mm ZINK Photo Paper are loaded into the camera body, dropping into a tray behind the lift-up LCD monitor and users can decide which shots to print after they are taken.

Target Market
At first glance, the Polaroid Two appears to be more of a novelty item than a genuinely useful device. Its capabilities are very limited, being more like those of a cameraphone than a digital camera. The tiny fixed focus/fixed aperture lens provides minimal flexibility and the 5-megapixel resolution is closer to cameraphone standard than a modern digicam.

The printing feature makes a major contribution to the novelty of the camera. Unfortunately, that novelty soon wore off with both adults and pre-teens we tested it on. However, except for making sticker prints, none had specific motivations to print at the default output size.

While it may be tempting to look at the low specifications and relegate the Polaroid Two to the novelty category, it fills a niche that is currently largely unoccupied. Most of the original Polaroid applications are possible with this camera - provided you can tolerate the small output size. The additional digital image file the camera produces is a worthwhile bonus.

Prints from the Polaroid Two are a bit too large to be used as passport photos (which have maximum dimensions of 50 x 40 mm). But there could be no complaint about their quality and, with care, you could learn to compose shots so they fit into the required area and trim prints to the correct size. The ability to make several prints from the same image file is a read advantage for this application.

Polaroid Two prints could be worthwhile for other ID photos and pictures documenting structures, processes or procedures. Indeed, any application requiring instant hard copy plus a back-up digital file is ideal for this camera/printer combo. The adhesive backing is particularly useful for any shots that have to be attached to paper or other substrates. Print quality is certainly good enough for most applications.

Build and Ergonomics
For a modern digicam, the Polaroid Two looks relatively big and boxy, because the inclusion of the printer requires additional space. However, despite being made mainly of plastic, it's solidly built and reasonably well finished. The front panel has a narrow silver strip near its left hand edge that carries the flash tube, lens and nine-hole microphone grille.


Front view of the Polaroid Two showing the exit slot where the prints emerge.

The rear panel carries a 3-inch (diagonal) LCD monitor with the low resolution (230,000 dots) you'd expect from the camera's price tag. It's quite difficult to read in bright outdoor lighting and no viewfinder is provided so users are often forced to ‘point-and-guess' in these situations. In addition, it crops approximately 5% from the edges of the image frame, making precise composition of shots difficult.

Rear view of the Polaroid Two.

A slider to the right of the monitor unlocks the cover to the paper tray, enabling the monitor panel to be raised, as shown in the illustration below. Ten sheets of ZINK Photo Paper can be placed in the tray at a time.


The paper tray where the ZINK Photo Paper packs are loaded.

The rear panel also carries a fairly standard arrow pad plus a W/T zoom rocker that accesses the digital zoom. Three digital zoom steps are supported: 2x, 3x and 4x. Below the zoom rocker is the capture/play button and under it lies the menu button.

The arrow pad provides direct access to the display and flash modes as well as the scene presets and self-timer options. Below the arrow pad lie the Print and Delete buttons.

The top panel carries the on/off button plus the large shutter release. A nine-hole speaker grille is also located here.

Top view of the Polaroid Two.

A tripod socket is located on the base plate with a battery/card compartment beside it. The Polaroid Two accepts SD and SDHC cards in capacities up to 4GB. The battery is charged in the camera via a connection socket on the side panel left of the monitor. A slider switch for normal and close focus is located here, along with a USB mini-B terminal.

ZINK Printing
ZINK stands for ‘Zero Ink' and refers to a technology developed by Polaroid Research Labs and first released to the market in 2006. It uses a heat-based process plus a special paper (actually a plastic substrate) impregnated with several layers of colourless dye forming crystals. Digital pictures are ‘developed' by passing the paper through a thermal transfer print head that selectively heats groups of pixels to different temperatures to create different colours.

Because the printer has no moving parts (aside from a paper feed mechanism) and no ink reservoirs, it can be very small and compact. These features have enabled Polaroid to create the Polaroid Two camera.

The ZINK paper used in the Polaroid Two is adhesive-backed allowing prints to be used as stickers. A single 10-sheet pack of 76 x 49 mm paper for the camera retails for an RRP of $6.95, while a triple-pack containing three 10-sheet packages has an RRP of $19.95.

Printing pictures taken with the Polaroid Two requires three steps. First you select play mode and display the picture you wish to print. Then press the Print button. This opens the printing menu, from which you must select ‘Print' and then hit the OK button. A second press of the OK button starts the printing process and, once engaged, you must wait until it is completed before you can take any more pictures.


A print emerging from the Polaroid Two camera.

It takes roughly 50 seconds for the print to emerge from the camera after selecting the print function in the menu. However, output speeds slow down if you print multiple copies of a shot.

The Print sub-menu contains settings for selecting the number of prints, cropping (1.5x magnification), adding a border (eight graphics to choose from), correcting red eyes and adding a date stamp to pictures. The latter provides three options: date, file number and date plus file number.

No data is currently available about the lightfastness of the ZINK prints - even from the manufacturer. Wilhelm Imaging research doesn't appear to have conducted any tests and a Google search provided no useful information.

Sensor and Lens
For a modern digicam, the Polaroid Two has modest specifications, with a 5-megpaixel 5.76 x 4.29 mm CMOS sensor and small, fixed focus/fixed aperture lens of the type you'd find on a mobile phone. The lens focal length is fixed at 6.47mm, which equates to 39mm in 35mm format and isn't at all wide by modern standards.

Its aperture is fixed at f/3 to provide sufficient depth-of-field to cover subjects from 1.45 metres to infinity. It doesn't change when the focus slider is in the Macro position so we're not sure what the macro slider actually does.

Still pictures can only be recorded as JPEGs, although the camera supports five image size settings and three levels of compression. Interestingly, the highest resolution setting, 7MP, is obtained by firmware interpolation, which adds in extra pixels on the basis of existing pixels in the normal 5-megapixel image the sensor produces.

This process can be fraught with difficulties as it depends on the quality of the 5-megapixel file - and also the capabilities of the processing software. Done well, FW interpolation may produce acceptable results; done poorly, it delivers images that are artefact-affected and of poor quality, despite being larger files.

Compression levels in the Polaroid Two are relatively high for all image sizes. The table below shows typical file sizes supported.

The Polaroid Two can also record video clips - but only with VGA or QVGA resolution. Two ‘quality' settings are provided for each, presumably based on compression ratios. The maximum recording time for a clip is 60 minutes, regardless of size and quality.

The camera accepts SD and SDHC cards in capacities up to 4GB - which you'll need for shooting video as the internal memory can only hold four seconds. The table below shows the recording capacities for a 4GB SDHC card.

Clips are recorded with monaural soundtracks and the camera's audio recording system can also be used to attach 30-second voice memos to still shots.

Camera Controls
Like many point-and-shoot digicams, the Polaroid Two isn't totally devoid of user-adjustable controls, although some are accessed slightly differently. To accesses the shooting mode menu you must press the bottom button on the arrow pad. Here you'll find the default Program AE mode plus 17 scene pre-sets and a User Setting. Unfortunately, no information is provided in the user manual about how to register user settings and the camera provides no assistance.

The other buttons on the arrow pad are straightforward, although their options are fairly basic. The Display button lets you choose between image only and image plus very basic information overlaid. The flash button toggles through five options (including pre-flash, red-eye reduction and always off), while the self-timer lets you choose between 2- and 10-second delays and a two-shot mode combining both.

Pressing the menu button opens three pages, separately covering Capture, Function and Settings. The first page of the Capture menu contains settings for image size/quality, ISO, white balance, exposure compensation, metering patterns and sharpness, saturation and colour adjustments (normal, vivid, sepia, monochrome, blue, red, green, yellow or purple).

The second page carries only three settings: Capture Mode (which actually contains the drive mode settings), LCD Bright and Date Print. The third page covers camera settings, such as the date/time, beep, auto off and language settings plus system and frame number resets.

When you want to record video clips, you must select the video mode from the Scene sub-menu, which is a little clumsy (although not unusual in entry-level digicams). Options here include setting video resolution and quality, colour and switching audio recording on and off.

Although it only supports four sensitivity settings (Auto, ISO 100, ISO 200 and ISO 400) the Auto setting can reach down to ISO 50 in very bright conditions - and will do so provided the shutter speed is faster than 1/50 second. However, we were unable to force the sensitivity above ISO 400.

Playback and Software
Image playback options are much as you'd expect, although there's no support for viewing index thumbnails. However, you can view slideshows of shots stored in the camera or on the memory card. You can also delete, protect and resize individual shots and change the compression of recorded images to reduce the size of the files (but not increase it).

The Polaroid Two lets you copy images between the internal memory and a memory card in the camera. You can also adjust the LCD monitor's brightness. The camera also provides several editing functions that can be applied before printing photos, including image cropping, adding a border, correcting red eyes and imprinting date/time data.

The bundled software disk contains a copy of the 47-page user manual in PDF format plus ArcSoft Media Impression and PrintCreations for Windows and Macintosh. A PC camera driver is also provided.

 Performance
Although shots played back on the camera's LCD monitor looked rather flat and fuzzy, most of the prints we made from shots taken in outdoor lighting looked good - although slightly soft. Prints from shots that were correctly exposed were reasonably detailed and had natural-looking colours. However, some of the prints we made from flash shots lacked the tonal nuances that were evident in the original digital file.

The camera has obviously been set up for daylight shooting because it handled well-lit subjects with an average brightness range quite competently. However, when faced with a wide brightness range, the deficiencies of the sensor and lens became apparent. Blown-out highlights were slightly more common than blocked-up shadows.

We also found the lens to be extremely flare-prone in backlit situations, even when the sun was well outside the frame. The digital zoom produced images with reduced clarity and visible artefacts. Both problems increased with zoom magnification. Examples of both issues are provided in the Sample Images section below.

Our Imatest testing yielded some interesting results, showing the review camera to be capable of the sensor's potential resolution at both the interpolated 7M image size and the actual 5M size. Lateral chromatic aberration was generally in the low band.

Because the camera has a fixed lens aperture and only three ISO settings we are not able to provide graphs illustrating its performance at different settings. Suffice it to say resolution declined progressively with the ISO 200 and ISO 400 settings.

Imatest showed colour reproduction to be far from accurate and revealed significant shifts in most hues and much higher saturation for most colours than we normally encounter with the digicams we review. Results from 7M and 5M sized shots were very similar, showing these problems to be related to the sensor itself, rather than the image processor.

Surprisingly, auto white balance performance was very good, with only slight warming being visible in shots taken under incandescent lighting and no significant colour casts in fluorescent light shots. The white balance presets over-corrected slightly under both types of lighting while the manual setting produced similar results to the auto mode.

The flash on the review camera was fairly weak and required an ISO setting of 400 to illuminate subjects more than about two metres from the camera. However, it provided a useful fill-in for closer subjects and exposures were well-balanced for close-ups and portrait shots. We found no red eyes in the latter, although the perspective the lens wasn't particularly flattering for close-up portraits.

Video quality was much as you'd expect from the camera's resolution and the associated soundtracks were slightly flat. Wind noise can affect soundtracks and no wind cut filter is provided.

The review camera took just over three seconds to power-up but shut down a little faster. A ‘Goodbye' message is displayed very briefly on the screen before power is shut off. Shot-to-shot times averaged 2.5 seconds without flash and 4.5 seconds with.

We measured an average capture lag of 0.3 seconds and it took an average of 2.7 seconds to process each image file. The Continuous shooting mode recorded three frames at one second intervals. It took 3.1 seconds to process this burst.

With the Burst mode, the camera will keep recording shots while storage is available. Shots are recorded at intervals of approximately 1.6 seconds and processing appears to be on-the-fly as the camera was ready for shooting again just 3.4 seconds after the last shot was taken.

Buy this camera if:
- You could use a digicam that produces instant business card-sized adhesive-backed prints. 
Don't buy this camera if:
- You require a pocketable camera.
- You require a zoom lens, high resolution and fast continuous shooting.
- You want to shoot HD video clips.

IMATEST GRAPHS

5M image files

7M (interpolated) image files

SAMPLE IMAGES

All shots taken with 6.5mm focal length at f/3.0.

Auto white balance with incandescent lighting.

Auto white balance with fluorescent lighting.

ISO 50, 1/820 second.

4x zoom (digital); ISO 50, 1/564 second.

Extended brightness range subject; ISO 50, 1/340 second.


Contre-jour lighting; ISO 50, 1/2006 second.


Flare; ISO 50, 1/838 second.


Flare; ISO 50, 1/419 second.


Flash portrait in close-up mode; ISO 100, 1/40 second.


Close-up mode; ISO 50, 1/77 second.


Site documentation; ISO 100, 1/40 second with flash.

Image sensor: 5.76 x 4.29 mm CMOS sensor with effective resolution of 5 megapixels
Lens:  6.47mm f/3 lens (equivalent to 39mm in 35mm format)
Zoom ratio: 4x digital zoom only
Image formats: Stills - JPEG (Exif 2.2); Movies - AVI
Image Sizes: Stills - 3072 x 2304 (by interpolation), 2560 x 1920, 2048 x 1536, 1280 x 960, 640 x 480; Movies - VGA and QVGA at 30 frames/second
Shutter speed range: 1/2 to 1/1500 second
Self-timer: 2 or 10 second delay plus 2-shot 10+2 seconds delay
Image Stabilisation: No
Exposure Compensation: +/- 2EV in 1/3EV steps
Focus system/range: Fixed focus; 1.45 metres to infinity; Macro to 60 cm
Exposure metering/control: Multi-pattern, Centre-weighted average, Spot
Shooting modes: Program AE plus 19 scene pre-sets (Landscape, Fireworks, Flow water, Splash water, Portrait man, Portrait lady, Sports, Text, Snow, Beach, Sunset, Sunrise, Night scene, Night portrait, Pets, Video, Candlelight, User setting)
Capture modes: Single, Continuous, AEB, Burst, Series+flash, Pre-shot, Couple-shot
Colour modes: Normal, Vivid, Sepia, Monochrome, Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Purple
Adjustments: Sharpness and saturation adjustable across three steps
ISO range: Auto, ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400
White balance: Auto, Tungsten, Fluorescent (x2), Daylight, Cloudy, Manual
Flash modes/range (ISO auto): Auto, red-eye reduction, pre-flash, flash on, flash off;  range 1.2-3.0 metres
Storage Media: 16MB internal memory plus SD/SDHC expansion slot (up to 4GB cards)
Viewfinder: No
LCD monitor: 3-inch colour TFT LCD, 230,000 dots; 5 steps of brightness adjustment
Power supply:  7.4V rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Dimensions (wxhxd): Approx. 118 x 76 x 36.5 mm
Weight: Approx. 285 grams (without battery and card)