Polaroid Swinger
Encyclopedia
Land Camera
Land cameras are instant cameras with self-developing film named after their inventor, Edwin Land, manufactured by Polaroid between the years of 1947 and 1983. Though Polaroid continued producing instant cameras after 1983, the name 'Land' was dropped from the camera name since Edwin Land retired...
produced by the Polaroid Corporation
Polaroid Corporation
Polaroid Corporation is an American-based international consumer electronics and eyewear company, originally founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land. It is most famous for its instant film cameras, which reached the market in 1948, and continued to be the company's flagship product line until the February...
between 1965 and 1970. At $19.95 USD it was the first truly inexpensive instant camera
Instant camera
The instant camera is a type of camera that generates a developed film image. The most popular types to use self-developing film were formerly made by Polaroid Corporation....
, a fact that helped fuel its enormous popularity and made it one of the top-selling cameras of all time. The Swinger was especially successful in the youth market due to its low price, stylish appearance, and catchy "Meet the Swinger" jingle
Jingle
A jingle is a short tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. The jingle contains one or more hooks and lyrics that explicitly promote the product being advertised, usually through the use of one or more advertising slogans. Ad buyers use jingles in radio and television...
sung by Barry Manilow in a television advertisement featuring a young Ali MacGraw
Ali MacGraw
Elizabeth Alice "Ali" MacGraw is an American actress. She is known for her role in Love Story, for which she won a Golden Globe and received an Academy Award nomination.-Early life:...
.
The Swinger featured an extinction exposure meter
Light meter
A light meter is a device used to measure the amount of light. In photography, a light meter is often used to determine the proper exposure for a photograph...
tied to the aperture which displayed the word "YES" in a window below the viewfinder
Viewfinder
In photography, a viewfinder is what the photographer looks through to compose, and in many cases to focus, the picture. Most viewfinders are separate, and suffer parallax, while the single-lens reflex camera lets the viewfinder use the main optical system. Viewfinders are used in many cameras of...
when the exposure
Exposure (photography)
In photography, exposure is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the photographic medium during the process of taking a photograph. Exposure is measured in lux seconds, and can be computed from exposure value and scene luminance over a specified area.In photographic jargon, an exposure...
was set correctly. Earlier models also displayed the word "NO" when not properly adjusted, while later units used only the YES indicator. The Swinger also included a built-in flashgun
Flash (photography)
A flash is a device used in photography producing a flash of artificial light at a color temperature of about 5500 K to help illuminate a scene. A major purpose of a flash is to illuminate a dark scene. Other uses are capturing quickly moving objects or changing the quality of light...
for AG-1 flashbulbs.
The Swinger used Polaroid's 20-Series roll film
Roll film
Rollfilm or roll film is any type of spool-wound photographic film protected from white light exposure by a paper backing, as opposed to film which is protected from exposure and wound forward in a cartridge. Confusingly, roll film was originally often referred to as "cartridge" film because of its...
, which was the first Polaroid roll film to develop outside the camera.
Variants included the Model M-15 "Swinger Sentinel" (the Swinger II in non-US markets), which was a cheaper Swinger without the built-in flash, and the Model 3000 "Big Swinger", which used 100-Series pack film instead of the old-style picture rolls. The Swinger name was also used on several international-market Polaroid cameras in the 1960s and 1970s.