Of any camera reviewer at a traditional publication, I’m often the one to dissent with others until they eventually say exactly what I do — years later. And in this case, we’re talking about autofocus. I’m going to be clear here: there’s a bunch of us people who have been left out of the equation when it comes to camera’s autofocus. And often, it’s those of us with darker skin. Contrast and phase detection has been really bad at this — and if you try to focus on someone like me without the use of human detection, the camera probably won’t be able to find me in low light. But years ago, Polaroid solved that problem. And in 2025, they brought it back.
The Polaroid Flip, which I reviewed earlier this year, can find people of color in low light without any issues. Why? Because the autofocus works with sonar — the same way that bats find their prey in darkness and dolphins find food ahead of them in water. That means that if something is in front of your subject, that too will be in focus. Sonar and the Polaroid Flip focus on the first thing that it sees.
This, obviously, is different from LiDAR.
I’ve spoken for years about how camera manufacturers should’ve done sonar autofocus a long time ago. But they haven’t With this latest camera from Polaroid, we see that it can be done very cheaply and effectively.
Please realize something: I’m not saying that they should totally get rid of contrast and phase detection. However, they could surely make a way to have sonar and those systems work together.
The Polaroid Flip isn’t a digital camera. It uses Polaroid’s pretty flawed film — and that’s probably the worst part of the camera. Though to be honest, it’s a whole lot of fun, stylish, and it’s often a camera that you really want to use and bring everywhere with you. In fact, I often don’t want to bring around big mirrorless cameras. And even though the Polaroid Flip is big, I still want to bring it around with me.
The Flip is pretty affordable and you can get one for yourself.