Why We Love Taking Pictures + The Instax Share Printer Review

One of the things we really love doing is taking pictures. One of our first few purchases for our home, even before the TV stand, the center & dining tables was the dry box.  This is where we store all our cameras to protect them from changes in humidity (and the not-so-friendly-fungus). *Yikes!*

Of course, out of the thousands of photos that we all take, we have our favorites and these are the ones that we’d like to share on our social networking sites.  But, we’ve seen social networking sites come & go and didn’t you just wish there was a way to save all those photos from the iffy & fickle internet gods?

Enter Instax Share!  We’re just so amused that when we posted a photo of the printer on our Instagram, you guys were equally excited about this.  Instax Share is another product from the Fuji, the same company that makes cameras that you all went crazy for in our last giveaway.

So, we checked out the specs for ya & here’s a low down on the new printer:

1. Instax Share Smartphone Printer SP-1 uses the same film as the other Instax cameras.

2. With InstaxShare App (which you can download from Google Play or the App Store), you can now print photos from your smart phone’s album or social networking sites.

3.  The InstaxShare App also allows you to put texts & photo effect and even a unique photo with the date, time & weather conditions but we don’t see it as enough.  We’ll tell you more about it in a bit 😉

4. The Instax Share Smartphone Printer SP-1 uses two CR2/DL CR2 lithium batteries (which can last you up to 100 prints by the way).  There’s also a power adaptor that’s sold separately.

Above: We just had to repost this photo collage made by Paul Riyadh Chuapoco of Paul the PR Guy.  Gahhh…This is just so good I no longer attempted to make a collage of my own.  Haha.  For those who’d like to find out how this was made, here’s a clue: the image size of each photo is 62mm (height) x 46mm (width) and this was printed using the Instax Mini Rainbow Film (at SRP Php 400.00 per pack).  If you have Photoshop, you know the drill 😉

Above: The Instax Share Smartphone Printer SP-1 with print outs using the Mini Candy Pop Pack (also at SRP Php 400.00 per pack) & Mini Glossy 10 x 2 (at Php 680).

We also compared this printer with an existing one in the market & so far (after much deliberation and film abuse *oops*) here are our conclusions:

1. The Instax Share printer definitely prints faster than the existing smartphone printer in the market. (Approximately 16 seconds per print-out)

2. The app & the printer both show you how much film & battery are left so you don’t have to panic.  When the printer is not used, it automatically shuts off to save battery.  You connect to the printer via wi-fi; no 3G or LTE connection needed (unless of course you haven’t downloaded the app yet).  In our opinion, this is more stable than Bluetooth.  Also, more people can connect to the device at once (although of course you have to take turns printing).  The app will also inform you if someone else is using the printer.

3.  The Instax printer tends to make all your photos look vintage and a bit washed out so if your photos have so much white in them and are a bit overexposed to start with (like mine), they’ll end up too white (just like in the upper right corner).

3.  If there’s one thing that we would like to change in the InstaxShare App, we hope it would soon have an update which includes tweaking of the photos prior to printing especially since we want the colors to come out of the printer the way we envisioned them.

Currently, we’re using Snapseed–a third-party photo editing app.  (If you’d like to be technical about it, go to Tune Image & use the following values: Ambiance = +100 & Brightness =  -45 & see what works for you).

Above: I’m so proud of Ponggo!  He’s finally also into styling (a.k.a. taking things around the house, putting them together & taking pictures of them).

The Instax Share Smartphone SP-1 printer will be out in the Philippines by the last week of March or the first week of April and will have an SRP of Php 9,990.00 for all you Instax addicts out there! 🙂

Happy printing!

XOXO,

Tipsy & Ponggo

P.S. More stuff about gadgets here:
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Fact of the Day #52: We tend to address gadgets as if they’re humans.
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