Polaroid Type 84

Type 84 was the square-format member of Polaroid's 80-series pack film line, a 3.25 by 3.375 inch black and white instant at ISO 100. The 80 series arrived in 1971 as a smaller, cheaper sibling to the 100-series pack film that had run since the early 1960s. Square format made it visually distinct from the rectangular 100s, and it became the format of choice for ID work, school portraits, and snapshot cameras like the Polaroid Square Shooter and Colorpack 80.

The film itself was Polapan stock: medium contrast, coaterless, intended for handheld use at shutter speeds of one tenth of a second or faster. Tonal rendering was straightforward and clean without the high-contrast snap of the cinema-engineer films like Type 667. For amateur use it gave honest grayscale prints. For pictorial work it was utilitarian.

Production history is uneven. Type 84 was a late arrival to the 80-series line. It was first produced in 2003 as part of a professional-market revival of the format and ran only until the full 80-series shutdown around 2006. By the time Polaroid stopped instant film production entirely in 2008, the 80-series films were already gone.

For anyone hunting surviving stock, the smaller square format means freezer rolls tend to surface in estate sales rather than commercial lab inventories. Prices stay lower than for the 4x5 sheet films because the 80-series cameras themselves are less collected. Compared with Type 664, the rectangular ISO 100 equivalent that ran in 100-series holders, Type 84 was the same emulsion in different geometry.

Format is 80-series square pack film, ten exposures per pack. Discontinued by 2006.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.0. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. The 1.0 exponent means metered time equals shot time, which suits the snapshot use case the film was built around. Expired-stock testing usually shows base fog before it shows reciprocity drift.