Another day, another innocent pleasure trembles on the edge of extinction: Polaroid is to stop producing the film for its instant cameras. There’s enough left to last into next year and then, pffft, no more instant snaps. It’s all about digital now. Or, in the words of a company spokesman: “Due to dramatic technological changes in the photographic industry, Polaroid is transitioning from its analogue instant film business into new and innovative digital instant photography techniques.”

What miseries. Digital cameras are boring. OK, the colours are sharp, and they are tiny, but there is no joy to them. No satisfying click, no challenge of composition. You just point it at something and, dull whirr, job done. Polaroids retain a kind of magic, and arguably more than a hint of modernity.

Warhol took lovely, occasionally graphic, Polaroids of friends, lovers and collaborators. Model scouts and fashion folk take Polaroids. Magazines take Polaroids of club kids and people on the street to convey a grabbed moment. Polaroids are pellmell, fun, frivolous and somehow still cool. Vivienne Westwood has used them in her most recent book. Patti Smith features Polaroids in her latest show. Not every photo has to be perfect. Polaroids are the loveable scruffs of the photo world.

While the fact that a cool minority still use Polaroids is no justification to keep them – the figures are a far cry from 1974, when an estimated billion Polaroid pictures were taken – this is still the only product that Laurence Olivier agreed to endorse. A company bod says: “We are working very hard to find some alternatives with people who may be able to take the recipe.”

Polaroid owners, hold on to your cameras – they will soon be collectors’ items.

The rest of us must get used to that dull whirr and the dreary ascendancy of digital.

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