Hi folks.

This is an Instamatic:

This is Instagram:

Looks to me like the Instagram app and photo sharing service is referencing the look and feel of the Polaroid SX70 and other 1970s-era “instant” cameras — cameras that used self-developing film.

Strangely enough, the Kodak “Instamatic” cameras weren’t even “instant.” They used regular film that needed to be developed and processed to create prints. My guess is that the name “Instamatic” was to highlight the fact that these were small, inexpensive and easy-to-use point-and-shoot cameras which allowed a tourist or other shuttersnapper to take a photo in an instant. Or maybe it was to highlight how easy it was to load the 126- and 110-format film cartridges, as compared to spooled film. Or maybe the name came from the fact that the earliest model was sold as a packet of powder, to which the would-be photographer would just add warm water.

But my point — if I have a point; more likely this is a desperate effort to salve my latest fingernails-on-chalkboard linguistic sensitivity — is this:

Instagram and Instamatic are different things.

Thank you. You may now return to your lives, which are clearly more well-balanced and fulfilling than mine is at the moment.

(Images are by Camerafiend on Wikimedia Commons, and from Instagram.)