In this video I explore some of the cameras in my collection. I look at the different body types, different operating systems and how they print. I’ll be shooting another episode going deeper into print settings and why I like using them.

Here are links to all the cameras in the video, these are affiliate links.

Amazon affiliate links.

All prices listed are from the time I wrote/posted.

These two cameras are the same except one has a silicone case to protect it. The silicone case is in the shape of a pink unicorn.

Pink Unicorn (Instax style) Camera ($40): https://amzn.to/46Pf9KS Another pink unicorn cam ($40) https://amzn.to/3MELE6i

Blue Plain (Instax style)  Camera ($39): https://amzn.to/3Q8vxPe

This is another pink unicorn camera, the print quality is somewhat better and it takes slightly better photos ($40): https://amzn.to/46PbpsK

Another pink unicorn cam: https://amzn.to/47CVrSs

 This case will fit all of the above cameras and 3 rolls of paper plus some pens and stuff: https://amzn.to/3MhyagL

This camera prints similarly to the 2nd pink unicorn but is purple and yellow in color and has a shape clearly inspired by old Polaroid cameras ($15): https://amzn.to/3sdNhkA

Black Polaroid inspired camera ($40) https://amzn.to/47b7VAP

I do not recommend these:

This camera is yellow and orange and is also shaped like an old Polaroid. It prints out at 4:3 which I like, but when it saves the images it stretches them to 16:9, so the images are distorted. If, like me, you hope to use the images on your thermal printer this is a no go. This one also has a flippy lens for selfies. ($36): https://amzn.to/3FzCHr2

Bulbous pink unicorn cam: https://amzn.to/3unVMKq This has the same issue as the one above.

Green dino cam: https://amzn.to/40Nzs9g This uploads fine but has a forced wait before it will print.

This case fits the purple or orange cams plus a few rolls of paper and a cord: https://amzn.to/3QABndP

This is the paper that I use. It’s cheap and is nice and glossy and has good contrast when printed on. It’s also thicker than some of the other papers I’ve used and doesn’t have a plastic core. ($14)  https://amzn.to/3SdGWA8

This is the paper I bought for work, it’s much thicker and very glossy. https://amzn.to/3SzTp14

Colored sticker paper I use. https://amzn.to/47eQHTu

Alcohol fades and somewhat whites out any images on a thermal print. I found that this happened on many papers, but not all and not on thermal print sticker papers.

So let’s dig into this.

Some examples of fading AND darkening. This paper came with the camera and had some intense reactions to the inks. This is all Sharpies.

You might think, as I did, that Sharpies and other alcohol inks would be the perfect tool for adding color to your thermal prints. We’d both be sorta right, and a whole lotta wrong. It turns out that alcohol and other solvents in alcohol based pens fade thermal prints. It can also lift the finish and blur the dark areas around. In other cases the solvents can blacken the paper.

This can be used to manipulate the images in a fun way.

These images were done with Artist Loft Artist Brush tip alcohol markers. Lots of smudging and fading and blurring of the background- what I particularly like about the effect.

Here we have Sharpies on thicker glossier paper. Notice that for most of the images that the darks didn’t fade much at all. Only on one image- the one with green, do we have fading.

Letraset and Prismacolor markers are much more intensely alcohol and other solvent based, but wow do they manipulate the image in a different way. I used 2 very pale grey markers- I think 10 or 20% gray. Both cool greys. You can see the ghosting effect here. Also the tree images used the narrow point side of these markers to pretty good effect. It lifted and smudged the darks. Neat.

This is a close up of one of the images where I used the very pale grey Prismacaolor marker to fade out and ghost part of the image- in this case the cars in this parking lot. Creepy and very cool.

But on some papers the alcohol doesn’t fade or alter the darks at all, so you can add a flood of lighter color.

I tested Sharpies, one pale LetraSet, one light gray Prismacolor, and a set of artist loft alcohol ink markers. I tested them on a couple of different papers and images. I also tested coloring the paper and then printing. 

The cheapo paper I favor will fade with all of the above but less so with sharpies. With Sharpies it fades and seems to come back a bit.

sharpies

With the slightly heavier and more coated paper that I bought for work it doesn’t fade at all.

Tests of all the alc pens on heavier glossier papers

With sticker paper nothing alters or shifts either.

I also tested some Sharpies that were at least 10 years old, if not significantly older. Shockingly they worked. They also seemed to alter things more so than the newer Sharpies. 

I also sprayed some images with plain old isopropyl alcohol, and it faded things significantly even on the heavier glossier paper.

Important to note, color the paper the night before and let it dry overnight. the alcohol can make the coating sticky and it can bind up on the print head, it will eventually print but it will be warped. I like the randomness of this. Do this at your own risk.

Another test was to color the paper with alcohol markers then print on it. The tests were fantastic and very cool.

Alcohol ink markers aren’t archival but neither are these photos. Part of the joy is that they are so disposable and temporary, they are the very definition of ephemera.

Note: I have provided affiliate links to the ‘zon items I have ordered in the past. With the ‘zon you may not get the exact same item I ordered. I’ve had this happen on more than one occasion. I order something I reorder it only to get a similar but ever so slightly different item. It is best to test whatever you get with the materials you hope to use to be sure it will react in the way you wish.

List of links:
This is the paper that I use. It’s cheap and is nice and glossy and has good contrast when printed on. It’s also thicker than some of the other papers I’ve used and doesn’t have a plastic core. ($14)  https://amzn.to/3SdGWA8
This is the paper I bought for work, it’s much thicker and very glossy. https://amzn.to/3SzTp14
Colored sticker paper I use. https://amzn.to/47eQHTu
Mystic Gem Sharpie https://amzn.to/3MAsPBl

This has been repubbed from my Ko-Fi page, if you have found this helpful or useful please head over and consider buying me a coffee so I can keep this blog useful. Want to buy art supplies and support me through affiliate links? It’s a great way to spend what you are going to spend anyway and have Bezos pay out a few coins. Click any of the links in my posts and buy through there. It doesn’t cost you anything and Amazon tosses me a few coins for providing you with a link. 🙂

One of the things I knew I wanted to do immediately with these cameras and prints was add spot color and colorize the entire image. To do this, I tried several things. Let’s start with the dry and semi dry media. Like colored pencils, markers, pens and highlighters.

I started with a range of prints and adhered them into my journal. In this case I’m using a Yoobi Composition book. I used my favorite fat Staples glue stick, which may not be available anymore. (sad face) Once I had the image glued down I let the glue stick dry for about 15 minutes. I want to avoid shifting as I work.

I then hit the image with a gel highlighter. I did the background of the image. The gel highlighter went on smoothly and easily. It also dried over night.

The next media I used was colored pencils. I used Prismacolors in transparent and bright colors. I used several layers of the pencils to get the color I wanted. I did notice that the color did obscure some of the darker areas of the image. Especially when I layered the color. I will note that the paper is very slick and doesn’t have a lot of tooth so colored pencils took some finessing to get to stick to the page.

I wanted to add back some white areas that grayed out in the image when I printed. I used a GellyRoll pen to do this. It worked great. In some areas of an image I wanted them darker, so I used my favorite UniBall 207 in bold but the medium point would work well too.

This led me to wondering what would happen if I used regular colored gel pen on these images?

Currently the only colored gel pens that I own (at home) are the Uniball Signo DX extra fine 0.38 set I bought at Staples at the start of lockdown. This set is not ideal. While I like the extra fine point size for sketching in small pocket notebooks, it doesn’t have enough flow to lay down enough ink to grab on the super slick glossy paper of these prints. Also they tended to dry out on the coating which then caused them to dig into the damp areas of inky goodness. The coating would then chip in small amounts and leave pristine white blobs. No good.

I do have a few other colors of gel pen- red, orange, and green. I had similar problems with the pen not getting enough traction on the page, though once it got going it laid down enough ink for coloring the image. Nice. The downside is the creation of larger ink blobs.

This paper coating is not absorbent. The ink really sits on the surface and takes a long time to dry. I know you are thinking about a heat gun… But uh, it’s thermal paper, it’ll turn black. It takes at least 15 minutes for a light coat of gel ink to dry, and I really found that thicker coats smudged hours later.

A pen that did much better was my Pigma Micron FN- the pen style fiber tipped version of the old Pigma Micron. The tip is quite small so it takes some time to add in the color but it does dry, eventually.

A pen that I hadn’t thought about, mostly because I forgot I had it on hand, is the Staedtler TriPlus Fineliner.  It lays down an impressive amount of ink for a fineliner, but it would take forever to color an image with a thick layer of ink, so I think this is best suited toward scribbling in shading and cross hatching.

Most of the inks were still tacky after an hour. Though those that lay on the lightest coating were the least tacky- so the UniBall DX was the least tacky as was the Micron.

Some tips:

• Try to get the smallest amount of ink on the image to create the coloration and tone you are looking for and stop there. The less ink on the page the better.
• Keep an absorbent piece of scrap paper nearby. This will help you get the pen rolling again and clear off the tip of blobs and coating pieces.
• Use the absorbent paper to blot the image when you are done coloring.
• Use the absorbent paper as a shield to keep your hand off the images as you add color.
• Try a test image before committing. Each paper works differently. Some papers have less coating and are more absorbent. Receipts are great for coloring!

Next I’ve got to try alcohol markers- Sharpies and other brands.

This has been repubbed from my Ko-Fi page, if you have found this helpful or useful please head over and consider buying me a coffee so I can keep this blog useful. Want to buy art supplies and support me through affiliate links? It’s a great way to spend what you are going to spend anyway.

I wanted to see if my two favorites could be combined. Can I combine thermal prints with a gel plate? Will acrylic paint react with the thermal coating and turn my images black? Or will this work?Short answer is: yes, it will work, but you need to finesse it.

• Use transparent colors.
• Use thin coats.
• Use a small plate.
• Use images with a lot of contrast.

Those tips produced my best results.Too much paint and it obscured the image. Too light an image and details were obscured too much. To opaque a paint and you can’t see the image at all. Too much paint of a transparent color- image is obscured. I started with an excessively thin coating of paint. This produced a very washed out color. I did layer on a second coat of paint and the paper did okay but felt weaker. This paper is pretty weak compared to sketchbook or even regular printer paper. Let it dry completely between coats from the gel plate otherwise you risk tears.I found this really let me get a nice lovely layer of complete color over the image. I’m thinking of the usual ways I use a gel plate to create images- masking and stencils…. I’ll get more into that in another post.I’d suggest the 3×5 gel plate for this, but I think you could charge up a larger size and layout multiple images to get matching images for spreads in a journal. I think you could  also get a neat effect with the shaped set that includes the hexagon and rectangle.I didn’t spend much more than 15 minutes on testing this idea out  and I think it adds a lot to these images. There’s something about a pop of color that can really bring out an image. I can’t wait to play with stencils and masks with these.

This has been repubbed from my Ko-Fi page, if you have found this inspirational please head over and consider buying me a coffee so I can keep the inspiration happening on this blog. Want to buy art supplies and support me through affiliate links? It’s a great way to spend what you are going to spend anyway and have Bezos pay out a few coins. Click any of the links in my posts and buy through there. It doesn’t cost you anything and Amazon tosses me a few coins for providing you with a link. 🙂