Polaroid Type 37

Type 37 was the high-speed entry in Polaroid's Series 30 roll film line, ISO 3000 panchromatic black and white in the 2.5 by 3.25 inch picture format. It arrived alongside the famous Type 47 in the larger Series 40 size when Polaroid pushed roll-film silver chemistry to ISO 3000 in 1959, giving owners of the Highlander and the smaller Land cameras access to the low-light shooting that had belonged only to the bigger-print bodies.

Development ran about 10 seconds at room temperature, same as the slower stocks in the line. The print came out with the characteristic Polaroid contrast: shadows compressed fast, midtones punched hard, highlights held. Skip the protective coating step after peeling and the image fogged within months. Photojournalists working the smaller Land cameras carried Type 37 for the same reasons they carried Type 47 in the Pathfinder bodies.

Grain was structured and visible at any reasonable enlargement, the cost of ISO 3000 silver chemistry in 1959. Compared with Tri-X pushed to 1600 the grain looked similar but the contrast ran harsher. Compared with the contemporary Type 47 the rendering was nearly identical, just inside a smaller frame. The Series 30 cameras were lighter to carry, which mattered for press shooters who needed to move fast.

The Series 30 format declined as Polaroid moved attention to the 100-series pack lineup through the 1960s and 1970s. Roll film across the entire range ended in 1979. By that point most of the Highlander and small Land cameras Type 37 was made for had been out of production for over a decade, and the film was sustaining cameras already in the field.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.0. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second; on Type 37 the correction is zero. At ISO 3000 a typical indoor available-light scene rarely needed more than a tenth of a second anyway, so the reciprocity regime stayed mostly an edge case. Meter the scene, hit the shutter, peel the print.