zink

I'm a bit of a Polaroid maniac. I have hundreds...Sadly Polaroid announced earlier this year their plans to discontinue making the film at the end of 2009. For the moment I'm stockpiling, but instead of worrying about what's to come with the classic film I thought I would talk about a new product created by Polaroid. ZINK!

Short for "Zero Ink," Zink is thermal printing paper. Now you may be thinking ok sounds great, but what does that mean. The short version is that it is paper embedded with dye crystals of the primary ink colors - Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta. At first glance the paper is colorless and appears to be nothing special, however when you load it into the thermal printer it goes through a developing process that produces professional quality prints.

So what does this mean for the common recreational photographer? Well since Zink requires no ink cartridges printers can be a fraction of the size, not to mention that you'll never again need to worry about running out of ink. There is even talk of incorporating printers into cell phones & digital cameras, so perhaps you'll finally print out all those digital pictures.

Plus the prints are water-resistant, smudge proof and tear proof. Coming in at a cost of 30 cents a print, they are far less expensive then traditional Polaroids to boot. Even more motivation to print out all those great digital images just sitting on your memory cards.

Zink and Zink products enter the market this fall. Visit the official Zink site to learn more: http://www.zink.com/ OR watch the "What is Zink" video below from Zink.com