A new potato cam that I ordered on Black Friday has been sitting on a shelf in my basement for over a month and I finally had occasion to play with it this week. It’s so much fun to use that I should have pulled it off the shelf much sooner.
It’s a kid’s camera that takes images at up to 8 megapixels and can print them on thermal paper, a roll of which goes in the bottom of the unit. This is the same thermal paper used in debit machines and such, making it dirt cheap. This is the cheapest instant camera on the market in terms of operating cost, that is for damn sure.
Your output choices are greyscale, lattice (dot matrix), or none. Greyscale is the highest quality, dot matrix is the most interesting, and none is a good choice for saving on battery.
Camera, Front
Back with Display
Camera, Front with Print
Camera, Bottom with Printer
Printing eats battery life like crazy and since this is a camera with an internal rechargeable battery, when you’re out of power you’re out of power. You can’t pop in a spare battery. You can carry a power bank and charge the unit between shots, but the camera cannot be turned on while it is charging. It is better to just let the unit write to its 32 GB card and print your images back at home. Thermal paper is so cheap that the cost is not a concern, but making your battery last for your outing is.
Zooming in to 100% in Photoshop (as seen above – click to embiggen) reveals the poor image quality of the stored images, which are 8.2 megapixels. They look like 5 megapixel images that were badly uprezzed, so don’t bother with the 8 megapixel setting if you have a comparable camera. I’m not fussed over this because the camera cost me $12.99 CAD. That’s right, $13 for a digital camera with a built-in printer. It’s a shit camera with a shit printer, but it’s fun to use!
You can colour the B&W prints that come from the camera before or after you scan them, or you can colour your scans in whatever program works for you. What I can tell you is that it’s fun to take a picture and have the camera crap out a useable image immediately. We’re talking within 10 seconds. You can probably also get a usable 4×6 inch print from the digital file, but who cares? You bought this for the shitty printed images, right? RIGHT?
I’m going to play with my new potato camera a lot more in the weeks to come, but the most important thing I can tell you about this camera is that, for an instant, it made me feel like a five-year-old holding my first camera again. That made the purchase worthwhile right there.
Anyone who doesn’t have one needs one. Frealz.
Dot matrix print courtesy of the Masterbee Kid’s Camera and scanned on an Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner. Images of the potato cam made with my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and faux Polaroid borders added using the free VNTG app for Android.
