PolaroidColor 600 / i-Type

Polaroid Color film for 600 and i-Type cameras is an integral instant color film rated ASA 640: the print comes out of the camera and develops by itself in 10 to 15 minutes [1]. It is made by today’s Polaroid, formerly the Impossible Project, which had to recreate a color chemistry after the original Polaroid Corporation stopped making film in 2008 [13] [9]. Polaroid lists the same speed, format and development time for i-Type, whose packs simply have no battery [1] [2].

Look and color

• Warm overall. Alex Luyckx finds “an overall yellow bias” [7], Parallax “warm, soft colours” [8]. Analog.cafe calls the palette warmer than Instax, whose colors lean cool [6].
• Pink highlights, green shadows. Analog.cafe says colors “often shift towards pink in the highlights and green in the shade” [6]. Blue Moon Camera describes the highlights instead as “a warmer, creamy cast” rather than stark white [9].
• Strong but limited color. Reds and blues come out strongest for Alex Luyckx [7]. Analog.cafe finds the print gamut limited, with saturation “natural and consistent” from shadows to highlights [6].
• Better than the Impossible years. Parallax found current film “less muted than the earlier versions” with richer blacks [8]; Dan Finnen found Polaroid Originals film in 2017 more contrasty and saturated than the previous Impossible generation [10].
• Variable. “Your results will vary from shot to shot”, with occasional color casts [9], and prints can turn slightly blue over time [10].
• Temperature changes the colors.
  • Cold: Polaroid warns of “a blue tint” and chilly-looking pictures below 13 °C [3]; Analog.cafe describes teal shifts [6]; Vintage Camera Hut, darker, flatter colors and lower contrast [11].
  • Heat: above 28 °C, color photos “have a tendency to develop with a yellow/red tint” [4].
  • X-rays: unexposed film sent through airport scanners usually comes out “cloudy and pink” [4].

Tonality

• High contrast, short range. Analog.cafe calls it “a high-contrast film” whose shadows and overexposed highlights quickly lose detail, and measured about 3.5 stops of dynamic range with a home test [6]. Blue Moon Camera finds the shadows “deeper and more blocked up” than on Polaroid’s black-and-white film [9], and Alex Luyckx regrets the lack of dynamic range [7].
• But “soft” in other reviews. Parallax describes a “retro, soft feel” [8] and Alex Luyckx images that are “soft and nostalgic” [7]. The word seems to describe sharpness and mood rather than the curve: Luyckx also gets “a rich deep contrast” on close, well-lit subjects [7]. Casual Photophile found some prints from the Polaroid I-2 camera as “punchy” and “contrasty” as vintage Polaroids, but “not all” [12].
• The pre-2008 curve agrees on range. On the old T-600 datasheet, maximum density stops at about 1.8 to 1.95 and minimum density at about 0.10 to 0.14, so the print holds no deep black and no pure white. The fall from one to the other spans about 3.6 stops, with a slope of about 1.7 in the middle (our reading of the graph) [5]. Polaroid Corporation classed that film as “medium” contrast, a slope between 1.10 and 1.70 [5].
• During development, shielding the print from light gives stronger contrast and clearer highlights [6]. The old chemistry developed in about 3 minutes [5]; today’s takes 10 to 15 [1].

Grain and sharpness

• No visible grain. Analog.cafe calls current instant films “virtually grainless” [6], and Alex Luyckx calls the images fine-grained [7].
• Low sharpness. The old datasheet gave a resolution of 7 to 10 line pairs per millimeter [5]. Analog.cafe finds the film “lacks sharpness compared to most standard film”, partly because of the clear plastic layer that protects the image [6].
• The camera matters. Sharpness and contrast depend on the camera’s lens, according to Alex Luyckx [7]; Casual Photophile got better results from the I-2 than from other Polaroid cameras [12].

Spectral sensitivity

The curves shown come from the pre-2008 Polaroid Corporation datasheet, not from today’s chemistry [5]. The three layers barely overlap: blue covers about 380 to 509 nm, green 491 to 590 nm with a peak near 571 nm, and red 590 to 670 nm with a peak near 648 nm, the highest of the three (our reading of the graph). The Grain Archive style uses that datasheet only for the tone range; its colors come from the reviews above.

Names, status and history

• 2008: the end of the original film. Polaroid Corporation announced in February 2008 that it would stop making instant film; the Impossible Project was founded that year to keep it alive [13]. It leased part of the old plant in the Netherlands and hired former Polaroid engineers [9].
• 2010: new chemistry. Impossible’s first films came out in 2010, color included [13]. Blue Moon Camera recalls them as fading quickly, finicky and inconsistent, improved through successive generations [9].
• 2017 and 2020: the Polaroid name. Impossible’s largest shareholder bought the Polaroid brand in May 2017. The company became Polaroid Originals in September 2017, with the battery-free i-Type film launched that month, then simply Polaroid in March 2020 [13].
• Today. On September 29, 2026, Polaroid sold Color film for 600 and i-Type at ASA 640 [1] [2], and color films for SX-70 (ASA 160), Go and 8×10 [14] [15] [16]. This page covers the ASA 640 film in 600 and i-Type packs; Polaroid says its chemistry is “continually improved” [2].
• Datasheet. We found no datasheet for the current chemistry. The only one is Polaroid Corporation’s T-600 sheet, from before 2008 and for a different chemistry, kept by the 125px archive [5].