What Happens if You Shake a Polaroid Picture? An Experiment 🎞️

Polaroid says don’t — many people do. Yet until now, no one has run an experiment to show exactly what happens when you “shake a Polaroid picture.”

I sacrificed a pack of Polaroid integrated film, Polaroid Go, and Instax Mini for this article to show you what would happen to the same picture — shaken vs. not shaken.

In this article: Who shakes them and why? An experiment. Shake vs. no shake: full-size Polaroid frames. Shake vs. no shake: Polaroid Go frames. Shake vs. no shake: Instax Mini frames. Now that you know what would happen, should you shake it? Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Who shakes them and why?

The modern integrated film sandwiches chemistry between layers of plastic, metal, and other materials — but that hasn’t always been the case.

This incredible way to get printed photos faster than any method since it was first introduced in 1948 by Edward Land of Polaroid actually benefited from being shaken.

Back then, Polaroids were made to peel apart, with the layer containing photosensitive chemical dyes being exposed to the open air. Much of that photochemistry used liquids that had to dry before the image could be safely handled without damage.

If you develop your film at home, you know that it needs to dry before you can print or scan — and passing it through air will accelerate the process, as expected.

The chemicals inside instant film frames are still liquid today. Some of them are suspended in numerous microscopic layers of special gelatin and other materials, whereas the pouches with development chemicals (hidden inside the thicker border of the frame) are runny. However, everything is sealed now, so shaking does not increase airflow to those chemicals and thus does not make the development process go any faster.

While you can still find peel-apart film today at very high prices, you probably won’t see anyone trying to shake those; at roughly $10/frame (or more), photographers and their models handle them gingerly as the discontinued material is becoming rarer every day.

Of course, there’s more to shaking Polaroid pictures than the practicality the product has largely outlived. Outcast and its frontman Andre 3000, who has long moved on from their single Hey Ya (recorded in 2002!), have inadvertently created a cultural habit that we can’t shake off.

“Shake it like a Polaroid Picture” is one of the most repeated lyrical verses of all time (according to me), and, although I can’t prove it, the song may still be encouraging photographers and non-photographers of all ages to wave a freshly developed frame of integral film in hopes of seeing the photo sooner.

As I’ve said, shaking won’t make Polaroid or Instax film develop any faster, yet I kept wondering what would actually happen to the film when we do, and how that compares with following the manufacturer’s advice to keep the image still. So I built an experiment.

An experiment.

To learn the effects of shaking instant film photos during development, I picked three popular formats: Polaroid (full-size SX-70), Polaroid Go, and Instax Mini.

The important thing about those formats is their size — you’ll see the difference clearly below — but the brand is also important.

With each of my three cameras, I took two identical shots and allowed one frame to develop without being touched. As I waited for the picture to appear, I shook the other frame with the same amount of vigour as you’ve seen the ladies do in the gif above. Polaroid frames take over 10 minutes to fully develop, so it was a mini workout for my wrists.

Once the images showed up, I allowed the frames to dry for another day and scanned everything in high resolution to examine the (potential) damage.