UPDATE: This film has been around for nearly two years now, and as of late 2013 is still being sold even as Impossible transitions to a new series of film. Likely by the time you read this UV+ will be replaced with 600 Black and White. If you want to seek out some of this film’s old school goodness, I recommend looking around eBay.
HISTORICAL REVIEW:
This is the newest version of silver shade, and features a new layer that does away with the sepia tone of previous generations of silver shade. Images are now truly silver shade – pure black and white. Durability and construction is top notch with the exception of some black frame packs (more about that below), and I haven’t yet seen any humidity damage set in on my photos.
Development is fast. You still have to shield new images with a hood on your camera like every other IP film, but within a few seconds an image is already appearing out of the blue developer. Silver Shade UV+ seems almost just as fast as genuine Polaroid. No two days of waiting like Color Shade Push here, just good ol’ instant photography. It’s amazing to think that the Impossible Project has come this far from PX 600 Silver Shade First Flush in only a year.
IP is currently selling versions of this film that have gray and black borders rather than the traditional white, which are actually quite cool. I initially scoffed at this, as I don’t generally use the borders when I scan in the images. But I must say, the black border sure does look awesome in person, especially with a grey scale image. It’s like a little built in picture frame.
Some of the black frame editions of this film suffer from a defect which casues undeveloped, gray areas on the image. If you want an example, look at the image with the bottles above. That little gray patch is the undeveloped area. In more severe cases it covers a larger portion of the image. IP is calling this ‘poor pod’ and is selling off affected packs for a low price (see deal of the century above). Personally, this doesn’t bother me, as only a few in each pack show the issue, and even then I don’t mind it.
This is the Impossible Project’s best monochrome film yet. It doesn’t have the insane defects of the first few generations, but it is stable enough to depend on and fast.