Is it better for high school students to buy a Polaroid or a camera?

If you are a novice, it is recommended that you use a digital camera. Polaroids belong to the category of film cameras. In terms of storage media, the electronic file format of digital cameras can be stored permanently, browsed and printed at any time, while instant photo paper can only be stored for 10-20 years in ordinary conditions, and can be stored for a longer period of time in dry and low temperature conditions.

Looking at the tolerance of photos, Polaroid photo paper has a built-in "forced impact" effect, that is, under the same exposure, more dark details will be lost, and bright details will be exaggerated. From this perspective , Polaroid is very unfriendly to novices, because it means you can't correctly perceive the camera's exposure.

Most digital cameras currently on the market, even entry-level ones, can record photos in raw format. The raw format is very conducive to post-production color grading and processing, and its recording of color and light information is much higher than that of ordinary photo formats and instant film.

From the perspective of shooting subjects, Polaroid film is a high-sensitivity (iso800) film, with larger grains and less delicate imaging. And the most fatal thing is that such a high ISO makes it impossible for you to capture the light when the light passes through it. Shooting in strong (noon, backlight) scenes.

Most of the functions of instant cameras are simply castrated, which also makes it impossible for you to perform long exposures, and cannot shoot night scenes and other long-exposure landscape films. Simply put, the iso of a film camera is limited by the film, but instant film has only one iso. In the photography parameter triangle, one parameter has been determined, which greatly limits the subjects you can photograph.

From the perspective of camera imaging, unless you are a polaroid camera modified from a medium format camera, the rest of the imaging is worse than an interchangeable lens + digital back. In addition, digital cameras can also perform modern shooting processing, such as panoramic stitching, super-resolution photo stacking and noise reduction stacking, etc. These photos cannot be taken with film machines (let alone Polaroids).