The new instant camera?

I’m a lucky old dog, because for my birthday I was given a My First Camera Insta 2. Rather than APS, this thing ought to be taking on the world by storm.

What you get in the box is basically a mobile phone camera with a thermal printer, in a neat package with big buttons. This has to be the best social camera there is. The camera is cute. It looks like a bear with one eye open. Press the print button and the bear pokes its tongue out.

Also available in blue

Instant picture cameras are great, but they have issues. Each picture is unique – when you give away the picture it has gone. And instant film is expensive. But what this camera does is let you take reasonable quality colour digital pictures and save them to a memory card. You can then print single or multiple copies directly from the camera. The prints are on thermal paper, so are contrasty and lack detail. But they are immediate and perfect for sticking on a fridge or in a wallet. The prints have an image area of 83 by 48mm, so have a nice slightly panoramic ratio of around 1.7:1 which is roughly 25% wider than a standard 35mm frame.

Specifications? The lens appears to have a horizontal angle of view of around 48 degrees, so the equivalent of a 40mm lens on 35mm. It shoots at a choice of resolutions, the best being 12mp. If set to 12 though it does seem to default to 9 on power-down. But nine is fine: this is not a pro camera. It also shoots video and has a selfie lens. See why it feels like a repackaged mobile phone? There is a clue in the name it gives a memory card when you format it: Dragon Touch. So this is likely to be a little Android tablet at heart.

I fell in love with it immediately. We now have six prints on the fridge, one in each of our wallets and a couple more up around my desk.

The camera comes with two rolls of ordinary paper and one of sticky-backed, and Amazon does a box of 20 for £6.50. At around 60 prints per roll, that’s a lot cheaper than instant film.

Any down sides? There is a bit of shutter lag. But hey, it’s digital – take a dozen pictures as the marginal cost is zero. Print the good ones. On the highest resolution it does some hard compression to the files, so there are jpg artifacts. Leave it on 9mp.

Why do selfie cameras reverse the image? To make it look like what you see in the mirror? I see a handsome fellow, so it must work.

Would I take this out to do ‘serious’ photography? No – this is a people camera. Would I use it for street photography? Yes – it looks cute enough to make people smile and you can give them a print. This camera is putting the fun back into taking pictures of people.

I’d also recommend this to anyone who’s feeling bored with their photography or creativity: get some lo-fi fun back in your life with a pukey bear cam.

There’s an update here.

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