For the past few months, there has been a lot of talk on the web about the application Poladroid which takes a digital photograph and turns it into a "polaroid" photo. Below are some test shots from Anne Bowerman (Flickr anniebee) which I think accurately show just how awful this program is at creating a fake Polaroids and based on other "Poladroids" I have seen, I have to assume that the people using the application are not all that familiar with the images produced by a real Polaroid instant camera. But that hasn't stopped over a million and a half people from downloading the application.

And this isn't the only application to try to fake the look of film based photography. The photo editing website Picnik offers "Lomo-ish" and "Holga-ish" filters. Camerabag for the iPhone has filters called "Helga" and "Lolo" (Holga and Lomo type filters) as well as it's own "Instant" look. And there are a host of Photoshop actions and filters that achieve the same thing on people's computers.

But why do this?

Perhaps all these attempts at retro-imitation indicate that people are just getting bored with the crisp, clean, clinically "perfect" images that digital cameras now produce. Or maybe these are attempts to connect with some old memories of times gone by.

Who knows for sure?

My only question is how can I get that square vignette from my Polaroid SX-70? My camera must be defective.