....about the recent hoo-hah surrounding the Impossible Project's press conference this week. I agree wholeheartedly with Damion's comments in the other thread about how the people involved with TIP come across as honest, dedicated and wholly decent individuals, but I take exception to the fact that TIP and its well-wishers along with a lot of journalists seem to have created a situation where TIP are being seen as the only game in town....the saviours of instant photography.
As an example, take this extract from a short speech/presentation that Doc gave in Tokyo recently:
"We are the only company in the world that can produce new instant film, hopefully for the traditional cameras."(If you want to see the clip go to
http://www.youtube.com/user/Mijonju#p/a/u/1/VHqbzEtbuWU and zoom ahead to 5:25 mins. With thanks to the always amazing Mijonju Show).
Now look, I know there are a couple of different interpretations one can put on Doc's words (worth also saying that he's not a native English speaker and that he's chatting in public in a somewhat informal setting), but is he really suggesting that no-one else in the world is making instant film for old cameras, or that no-one else is able to develop new product lines in this area?
Earlier in the talk, Doc does specify the cameras which TIP is producing film for, so seen as a whole it's all above board, but a phrase like that does tend to leap out at you. It's clear to me that, as an avid Land Camera + peel apart film user, part of the problem is that I'm jealous of all the integral talk we're hearing this week, but it's also true that my hype detector has been picking up a bit too much of this sort of thing over the last few days.
