Polaroid SX-70: the folding camera and the 10,000 tulips

October 2, 2026|Toni

Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera, the folding instant camera introduced in 1972

Needham, Massachusetts, April 25, 1972. Edwin Land stands in front of Polaroid's shareholders with a camera that folds flat. He presses the shutter five times in less than ten seconds. Each time, a print slides out. On the tables around him are red and yellow tulips.

The camera was the Polaroid SX-70. It was a folding single-lens reflex that pushed out a color print, which then developed by itself in daylight. Land called the idea "absolute one-step photography." It had taken decades to build. So why did the man behind it also need ten thousand tulips?

Maker: Polaroid Corporation, Massachusetts
Introduced: April 25, 1972, at Polaroid's annual meeting
People: Edwin Land led the project; Henry Dreyfuss and James M. Conner designed the body
What made it different: a folding SLR whose prints developed outside the camera, with no coating and no parts to throw away
Price at launch: $180

A question asked in Santa Fe

The story starts with a child. In 1943, Land was on vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his family. His young daughter asked why she could not see the picture he had just taken of her.

The Polaroid archive at Harvard Business School keeps his own account of what happened next. "Within the hour, the camera, the film, and the physical chemistry became so clear to me," Land recalled. He went to find Donald Brown, the company's patent attorney, who happened to be in Santa Fe too. Land described a dry camera that would give a picture right after exposure.

The idea was written down quickly. On December 10, 1943, a disclosure recorded a new self-developing film. It would produce a positive print inside the camera, shortly after exposure.

The code name that waited 28 years

Here is a detail that is easy to miss. "SX-70" was not first the name of a camera. According to the Harvard archive, Polaroid set up a special project for instant photography in 1944. Its code name was SX-70, and "SX" meant Special Experiment.

Four years later, in 1948, Polaroid's first instant camera went into production: the Model 95. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History holds the first unit off the assembly line, from the fall of 1948. It has a fixed f/11 lens of 135mm and makes prints of 3¼ by 4¼ inches. It sold for $95.

Polaroid Land Camera Model 95 from 1948, the first production unit, metal and brown leather body — Polaroid Land Camera Model 95, first production unit, 1948. Polaroid Corporation. Source: Smithsonian National Museum of American History. License: CC0.

The Model 95 was a start, not the goal. The name of the 1944 project came back almost three decades later, on the camera Land had been aiming at all along.

Land described his method in a way that explains the long wait. The Harvard archive quotes him: "You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect." The SX-70 was that fantasy, built.

Henry Dreyfuss and a camera 4.4 cm thick

To shape the body, Land hired Henry Dreyfuss. Smithsonian magazine notes that Dreyfuss had already designed the Bell System 500 telephone and John Deere tractors. The Cooper Hewitt design museum in New York credits the SX-70 to Dreyfuss and James M. Conner, with the project headed by Land.

The museum record gives the numbers. Closed, the camera is 4.4 cm deep (1¾ inches). Opened, it stands 12.5 cm tall. The body is polysulfone plastic with a layer of copper, nickel and chromium, plus applied leather.

Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera, folding SLR instant camera designed with Henry Dreyfuss Associates — Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera. Photo: Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden, via Flickr. License: CC BY 4.0.

Cooper Hewitt gives Dreyfuss's dates as 1904 to 1972. He died in the year the camera was introduced.

The Science Museum Group in London describes the SX-70 as the first folding single-lens reflex camera. According to Smithsonian magazine, an upward tug on the viewfinder made it ready to shoot. Fast Company's account explains the optics: inside, the image bounced between surfaces until it reached your eye. What you saw in the large viewfinder was what the lens saw.

A darkroom made of chemistry

The real trick was in the film. The SX-70 print came out into daylight and developed in front of you.

A memorial tribute to Land from the National Academy of Engineering explains how. Earlier one-step cameras held a mechanical darkroom inside. In the SX-70 system, pH-sensitive opacifying dyes made a chemical darkroom in the print itself. The Harvard archive adds that the prints left no chemical residue.

The camera did not carry its own battery. According to the notes on the Eames film for Polaroid, each pack of ten pictures had a disposable battery inside. It powered the electronics and the motor that pushed out each print. A fresh pack meant fresh power.

How much electronics, exactly, depends on who you ask. Smithsonian magazine counts 200 transistors. Fast Company writes that Land boasted of three hundred. Accounts differ.

Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera, the instant camera whose prints develop outside the camera — Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera. Photo: Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden, via Flickr. License: CC BY 4.0.

Ten thousand tulips

Now back to the flowers. In the spring of 1972, Eelco Wolf was Polaroid's international communications manager. He told Smithsonian magazine that Land called him into his office. On the table stood a prototype SX-70 and a vase of tulips of a variety called Kees Nelis, red outside and yellow inside.

Land wanted 10,000 of them for the shareholders' meeting. "This was shortly before Easter," Wolf recalled. "There wasn't a tulip to be had."

Wolf found a grower in the Netherlands with one unsold field of Kees Nelis. KLM delivered the flowers. At the meeting, shareholders were handed SX-70s and photographed the bouquets on their tables.

Smithsonian magazine gives the reason. The film was not yet perfect. Red and yellow were the two colors that showed it at its best. The tulips were not decoration. They were the safest possible subject for a film still in progress.

Miami first, then everyone

The launch was slower than the demonstration. According to Fast Company, the Polaroid SX-70 had only a limited release in 1972, in Miami. The full rollout came in the fall of 1973.

At $180, it was a luxury purchase. Fast Company puts that at about $1,200 in 2022 dollars. Even so, PetaPixel and NPR both report that more than 700,000 had sold by 1974.

Polaroid also commissioned a short film. The Eames Foundation lists "SX-70" by Charles and Ray Eames: 11 minutes, in color, with music by Elmer Bernstein. It was first shown at the shareholders' meeting and later used to sell the camera.

The instant film camera in an artist's hand

Artists took to the SX-70 too. In 1973 Walker Evans began to use one. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he was then seventy and in poor health. He liked the small, elegant camera and color prints that needed no darkroom work. With it he returned to familiar subjects: buildings, interiors, portraits and roadside signs.

Lucas Samaras took the opposite approach. The Met holds his Photo-Transformations, made from 1973 to 1976. While the print was still developing, he pushed, smeared and stippled the wet dyes with his hand or a stylus.

Both artists used the same property of the camera. The picture arrived at once, as a print you could hold.

Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera, another view of the folding instant camera — Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera. Photo: Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden, via Flickr. License: CC BY 4.0.

Which Polaroid SX-70 a collector looks for

The SX-70 was made in more than one form. The first model of 1972 is the one Dreyfuss and Conner shaped, in plated plastic and leather. The Science Museum Group dates its SX-70 Land Camera Model 2 to 1974 to 1977. The George Eastman Museum holds an SX-70 Sonar from about 1978.

The difference matters in use. The original focused by hand. Later models added ultrasonic sonar that focused automatically.

The battery detail matters too. Because the power sat in the film pack, an SX-70 needs a pack inside before its electronics will run. Fast Company notes that the Impossible Project later had to rebuild the film chemistry from scratch. It took years to come close to the original quality.

A camera run entirely by springs works differently, as the Journal piece on why a mechanical SLR still works explains. The SX-70 is the opposite idea: a camera that needs its film to come alive.

Back to the tulips

In April 1972, Land had a camera that folded to 4.4 cm and a film that was not quite finished. He solved the second problem with flowers. The shareholders saw red and yellow appear in their hands, on a print that needed nothing from them. That was the whole promise of the SX-70, and it had started with a child's question in Santa Fe.

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