Had a field day rummaging through an old camera studio I found in the middle of nowhere yesterday, they had boxes and boxes of old cameras… lenses, accessories… and they had a bunch of really old Polaroids, I was really hoping to find one like Max’s… no such luck. :-/
“Please welcome to the stage, Max Caulfield, the winner of our Every Day Hero Competition, please Max, say a few words…”
“Life is like a camera, just focus on what’s important and capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don’t work out, just take another shot…”
oh damn. that would have been fun though
William’s camera looks like a spectra system (as in, the camera literally called “spectra system”, as opposed to the system of cameras called “spectra” collectively – yeah, polaroid was really frickin dumb with names), but unfortunately those are no longer supported. it’s kinda crazy, they died twice, the original polaroid stopped producing film in 2008, and then the impossible project resurrected the format again, got successful enough to even reclaim the polaroid name, only for them to cut production of spectra in particular in 2019, to free up an underutilized production line and prop up their “go” line of cameras (yup, they inherited the bad names too).
the spectra system camera doesn’t quite look like the one Max uses throughout the game, dontnod did the changes well (they actually had a perfect recreation of a polaroid 636 in the 2014 demo but they seemed to have got some legal beef with polaroid and debranded all the cameras), but it is quite recognizable. shame that it doesn’t work, it was a really cool one. the closest currently functional cameras they got are the impulse and impulse af, and i could wholeheartedly recommend the autofocus variant, it’s genuinely one of the best cameras polaroid ever made imo.
the camera Max has in the beginning of the game looks like any old clamshell-design polaroid 600 camera. they actually never produced those in old computer beige, the closest color options are the striking yellow of the job pro, or the 50th anniversary edition sun 660. for general use, i’d recommend any of the ones with the massive gold autofocus dish – there actually is a perfectly rendered picture of a sun 660 in Chloe’s journals in before the storm, so that could be considered quasi-canon, even.
but in a way, the curved 90s design of the 636 close-up and its many rebrands (generally polaroid did that a lot, like way more than you’d expect) could also be considered quasi-canon, because of that 2014 demo.
I always wondered what the deal with the funny branding was, and why it was all different, there you go, I learned something.
Honestly I was just going with what I know, and the hopes of finding something similar… of the one she loses, and the one Chloe gives her. I guess all the fans are scooping up whatever is out there.
You remember the 2014 demo? Yikes, can one even still play it? I remember seeing the first promotional material for this game and wondering to myself, how will the gaming world take this, its so different… YEARS later, I am rummaging through old shops looking for LIS goodies, so I guess we took it well.
No other game has made me do that. (Well, maybe Before the storm and its bloody amazing t-shirt designs that I just HAD to have… but its all part of the same series, so I guess it doesn’t count).
While I was having designs cut the other day, I was at a print shop, and I saw a advert on their wall for custom plastic name badges, the owner was obviously a LIS fan, as the fictional names where all LIS characters. Just when you think you are the only one out there that still loves the series, you see something like that, that just makes your day.