Business Notes PRODUCTS

Family gatherings used to seem incomplete without a Polaroid camera. But the magic of seeing pictures 60 seconds after pushing a button faded in the early 1980s, when automatic 35-mm cameras and one-hour processing labs transformed conventional photography into a better-than-instant phenomenon. Polaroid's sales of instant cameras have fallen from 6.6 million units in 1980 to 3.8 million last year.

Adapting to the change in fortune, Polaroid announced last week that it plans to add regular film to its continuing line of instant-camera products. The company, based in Cambridge, Mass., hopes to wrest a fraction of the $7 billion-a-year world market for conventional film from industry leaders Eastman Kodak, which controls 60% of sales, and Fuji Photo Film, with 25%. One giant plus on Polaroid's side is its brand-name recognition. In just two years of testing in Spain and Portugal, Polaroid-labeled 35-mm, 110-mm and 126-mm film captured about 5% of the market.