No form of photo-making is quite as satisfying as instant photography. After pressing a shutter, the next minute or two is a waiting game of building excitement and paper wafting. The end result is either delightfully pleasing or amusingly shambolic. And that is precisely the experience that one Kickstarter project aims to bring to the smartphone world. Prynt is a case that turns your handset into an instant camera.
Anyone who keeps an eye on photographic tech will know that Polaroid is trying something similar right now. The company’s Zink printers are compact enough to fit into a bag, and they connect wirelessly with your phone, before speedily spitting out small prints. Technically speaking, Prynt is very similar, but aesthetically, it is quite different.
Designed to accommodate most modern smartphones of the non-phablet variety, the half-pound Prynt isn’t the slimmest case around. But the added bulk comes with a proper shutter button, an internal rechargeable battery and a capacity of ten photo sheets. Images can be printed as you take them, from your camera roll, or from your social accounts, with the actual printing process taking around thirty seconds. This is actual Zink technology at play, and the resulting prints seem to be satisfyingly punchy. It must also be noted that the case does not connect via battery-sapping WiFi or Bluetooth. Instead, you plug in your phone to one of the two built-in connectors — Lightning and Micro USB for iPhone and Android, respectively.
But that’s not all Prynt offers. Using the Prynt app (iOS and Android), you can record a short video, and a single frame from the film can be printed. Hold this print in front of your phone’s camera, and you see the original video projected onto the paper. It’s a completely pointless feature, but it is clever and fun, nonetheless.
For anyone wanting a slice of this mashup of old-new technologies, the price is surprisingly reasonable. Even with the early bird pledge tiers sold out on Kickstarter, you can get a Prynt case plus ten sheets of photo paper for $99. The case comes in three, faux-leather colors, and refill packs of paper can be ordered via the app, at $5 for ten sheets.
To find out more about the project, head for the Kickstarter page.
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