Thursday, June 30, 2016

Fujifilm Has a Speedy Instant Photo Printer for Smartphones

Fujifilm has found a nice niche with their own take on instant photography — mobile photo printers made for use with smartphones. Their Instax line is growing today with the release of the Instax Share Smartphone Printer SP-2, a slight redesign of the SP-1.

Slight's no slight, though — the SP-2 is a worthwhile upgrade. In addition to being a bit narrower and more travel-friendly, the printer itself has gotten some nice upgrades. Both versions print roughly credit card-sized photos on Fujifilm's photo paper, but the SP-2 prints at 320 dpi compared to 254 dpi on the SP-1, resulting in more detailed pictures. It's also much faster, spitting out photos 10 seconds after hitting the print button on the companion app (compared to 16 seconds on the SP-1).

Speaking of the companion app, that Instax Share app has a few basic editing features, like filters and color saturation, brightness, and contrast adjustment. It's also possible to create collages or separate one photo into multiple photos to better suit the smaller size of the prints. Photos can be shared to Facebook and Instagram from the app, too.

There's still room for printed photos — digital photos are nice, but they tend to just sit unloved on hard drives after they've been taken. Printed photos at least have a chance of making it onto a wall somewhere. Looks like enough people have found value in them for Fujifilm to go ahead with an updated model, so that speaks volumes, too. It helps that those into instant photography tend to be very passionate about it — I'm thinking about a couple friends in particular who have gotten a lot of use out of their smartphone printers over the years.

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The Instax Share SP-2 will be available in July for $200 with silver on white or gold on white colorways. Fujifilm's photo paper costs $20 for a pack of 20.


Source: Fujifilm Has a Speedy Instant Photo Printer for Smartphones

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