My new favourite toy

Martistry said

My former father-in-law used to say, he who dies with the most toys, wins. I like that.

Last week, I picked up a Kodak Mini 2 Retro mobile printer. It's awesome.

£85 gets you the printer and 68 sheets of photo paper, which come in cartridges of 10 (apart from the pre-loaded 8 in the printer), using a 4-stage dye-sublimation printing process to create 2.1-by-3.4-inch prints.

Each one takes just over a minute to print, and the quality is impressive.

I opted for one of these instead of a Polaroid/Instax camera, so I can take photos on my 'proper' camera, send them to my phone wirelessly, do a little editing in Lightroom Mobile, and then send them to the printer.

I took it to a drinks reception this evening, snapped a few candids, printed them out and handed them to strangers as gifts. Brilliant reaction each time and a perfect conversation starter.

The equivalent workflow for event photography at black tie balls etc. Until magic mirrors killed the business. 

Back in 2009 I think I had a Canon Selphy printer. It was great to give models some images of the day to take home with them. In those days, money was no object, and yet I stopped because they were so expensive to print. 

Later on when I used to shoot for a national model academy, I used to use a Clicklte touchscreen monitor and sub dye printer. The media pack for those is about £200 now I think !

Great fun though. Shows that what goes around comes around 👍

Was doing this years ago, small zink prints on the spot and a couple of mobile dye subs, gave them out on shoots we arranged between a few photographers muas/models all working TF and hired Calumet in Manchester on Saturdays to get together. Can't beat prints on the day to take away.

Glamourportraits said

Martistry said

My former father-in-law used to say, he who dies with the most toys, wins. I like that.

Last week, I picked up a Kodak Mini 2 Retro mobile printer. It's awesome.

£85 gets you the printer and 68 sheets of photo paper, which come in cartridges of 10 (apart from the pre-loaded 8 in the printer), using a 4-stage dye-sublimation printing process to create 2.1-by-3.4-inch prints.

Each one takes just over a minute to print, and the quality is impressive.

I opted for one of these instead of a Polaroid/Instax camera, so I can take photos on my 'proper' camera, send them to my phone wirelessly, do a little editing in Lightroom Mobile, and then send them to the printer.

I took it to a drinks reception this evening, snapped a few candids, printed them out and handed them to strangers as gifts. Brilliant reaction each time and a perfect conversation starter.

The equivalent workflow for event photography at black tie balls etc. Until magic mirrors killed the business. 

Back in 2009 I think I had a Canon Selphy printer. It was great to give models some images of the day to take home with them. In those days, money was no object, and yet I stopped because they were so expensive to print. 

Later on when I used to shoot for a national model academy, I used to use a Clicklte touchscreen monitor and sub dye printer. The media pack for those is about £200 now I think !

Great fun though. Shows that what goes around comes around 👍

I was concerned about the cost per print, but £18 for pack of 60 sheet cartridges works out to 30p a print, ignoring the cost of buying the printer. The Canon Selphy packs look like 25p a print (£27.28 for 108 sheets). Slightly larger print size too. I feel an upgrade coming along!

Some of the youngsters of today might never have seen such retro tech and consider it magic!

Good to hear it produces good quality. A lot of retro stuff is far inferior to the product it is trying to imitate.

Just look at the recent mini resurgence of cassette players, all of which are pretty terrible - though that’s due to the fact that nobody is manufacturing decent mechanisms any more.

I used to have a Selphy printer - might even have been before they started calling them Selphy! Fun thing, we used it to print our own postcards when we were in holiday

I have a Fuji Instax Wide printer now, again quite fun to use.

What a great idea. I've done quite a few event photography for clients who don't want prints on the day, but I hand out business cards. Now I can hand out prints with my details on the print;

Looks a really interesting gadget!  

I have the Polaroid version, and I agree, they are a great fun little printer.

Martistry Very interesting. I can see a lot of uses for this. Thanks for the info.

Edited by waist.it