Polaroid SX-70 OneStep1977

History

Polaroid introduced integral instant film with the SX-70 SLR in 1972. The SX-70 was a technical marvel — a folding single-lens-reflex camera with a glass lens, through-the-lens viewing, manual focus, and a self-developing print that emerged face-down and developed in daylight. It was expensive, priced at launch around $180 (roughly $1,300 in 2026 dollars), and targeted at enthusiast photographers and professional users who wanted instant proofing capability without peel-apart film.

By the mid-1970s, Polaroid's challenge was extending SX-70 film to a mass-market price point. The company had explored interim models including the Pronto! line, but the OneStep — released in 1977 — was the definitive low-cost SX-70 camera. By stripping the SX-70 to its minimum — fixed focus, no optical through-the-lens viewing, plastic lens, plastic body — Polaroid could offer integral instant photography at roughly one-seventh the price of the original SX-70.

The rainbow stripe design, created by Polaroid's in-house design group, became the camera's signature. The stripe was functionally meaningless but visually memorable. Combined with aggressive television advertising, the OneStep became a cultural fixture of the late 1970s. Andy Warhol was famously photographed using a Polaroid SX-70 (the folding original, not the OneStep), but the OneStep was what most families actually owned.

The OneStep was manufactured in very large quantities and remained in production in variant forms until the 600-series cameras — using a higher-ISO film (ISO 640) that worked better in average indoor conditions — displaced the SX-70 film format for mass-market use in the early 1980s. The SX-70 film format itself continued in production for enthusiast users and was later revived by Impossible Project (now Polaroid) in the 2010s.

Why It Matters

The SX-70 OneStep is the camera that delivered on the original SX-70 promise for ordinary consumers. The original SX-70 was admired by photographers and designers; the OneStep was actually purchased by tens of millions of people. It normalized the idea that a photograph could develop in your hand in minutes — a concept that became so embedded in popular culture that the phrase "Polaroid picture" became a synonym for instant photography regardless of brand.

The rainbow stripe is among the most successful product design moves in consumer camera history: it costs nothing to manufacture beyond ink, but it transformed an otherwise featureless white plastic box into an immediately recognizable object. The design has been referenced, reprinted, and imitated across multiple decades of popular culture.

The OneStep also marks a transition in how Polaroid conceived of its products: not as cameras in the traditional sense but as delivery mechanisms for a film experience. The camera's design subordinated all photographic control to the chemistry of the film itself.

Sample Photographers / Notable Use

• Andy Warhol used Polaroid SX-70 cameras (the folding original SLR) extensively for his portrait work from the 1970s onward; the OneStep shares the film format if not the camera body.
• The SX-70 OneStep appears in the music video for "Hey Ya!" by OutKast (2003), which featured the gesture of shaking a Polaroid picture — an action Polaroid itself had advised against as it can damage the developing image.
• The camera was depicted in numerous television commercials through the late 1970s and early 1980s, including the campaign featuring James Garner and Mariette Hartley for Polaroid that ran 1977-1982.
• The rainbow stripe design has been appropriated in graphic art, fashion, and design references across multiple decades, making the camera recognizable to people with no photographic interest.

References

• Camera-Wiki: Polaroid OneStep - model identification and variant listing.
• Wikipedia: Polaroid SX-70 - SX-70 film family history from original SLR through OneStep and 600-series transition.
• Christopher Bonanos, Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012) - detailed account of the OneStep's development, marketing, and cultural impact.
• Peter Buse, The Camera Does the Rest: How Polaroid Changed Photography (University of Chicago Press, 2016) - cultural analysis of SX-70 integral film and its mass-market successors.