Instant photo fans, put this Sprocket in your pocket

POLAROID-STYLE instant-print cameras have always been a bit of a niche product. Dedicated cameras take better pictures. Photo shops – if you can find one these days – produce better prints. Despite these drawbacks, their point-and-print capability has made instant cameras a hit with successive generations of buyers.

But in an era when almost all of us carry a decent quality camera in our pockets or handbags in the form of a smartphone, wouldn’t it make more sense to do away with the camera part of the instant camera and simply pair the phone with an ultra-portable printer?

That’s the thinking behind the HP Sprocket, a fun new product from the California-based company better known for its desktop printers. They’ve certainly got the portable part right. About the size of an Altoids tin and not much heavier, this mini marvel will easily slip into a pants pocket or clutch purse.

Just download the iphone or Android app, pair it with your phone via Bluetooth and fill it up with the patented Zink photo paper, and you’re ready to be the life and soul of your next party or scrapbooking club meeting.

I found that a single charge gives enough juice to print about 30 pictures, but if it does run out when you’re on the go, you can top it up with any available cellphone micro-usb charger, so there’s no need to lug around the charger that comes with it.

Unlike most printers, the Sprocket doesn’t use any ink. Instead, HP has partnered with specialised print paper and label company Zink – short for zero ink – to create their own custom photo paper that produces images by heating crystals in the paper. Interestingly, the Zink technology had its origins as a project inside Polaroid Corporation in the 1990s, which spun out Zink as a fully independent company in 2005.

The prints are smudge-proof, according to HP, so there’s no need to do an Outkast and “shake it like a Polaroid picture”. They also have peel-off backs, allowing you to easily stick them in a scrapbook or on your fridge. So, how good are the prints? For a pocket-sized gadget that produces wallet-sized 5x7.6cm snaps, I wasn’t expecting National Geographic quality prints and I didn’t get any. That said, they’re perfectly good enough for casual snappers. I personally would have preferred them to be a bit closer to the size of traditional Polaroids, but then the printer would have needed to be bigger and bulkier, defeating its intended purpose.

The biggest appeal of traditional instant cameras has been their social, let’s get the party started, aspect. Snapping fun photos and printing them out on the spot for everyone to laugh at is still a great ice-breaker. Bluetooth connectivity means other partygoers can beam their pics to the printer – if you allow them, of course – enhancing the social vibe.

A further enhancement to the old-fashioned Polaroid experience is that the Sprocket app lets you easily import pics from your favourite social media feeds and customise them with colourful frames, text, stickers, filters and more before printing them.

And when all the fun’s over, everyone gets to take home a picture or two as a semi-permanent memento of the occasion. With hundreds, perhaps thousands, of digital photos crammed into your smartphone’s memory or sitting in the Cloud, there’s something to be said for helping a few of them to escape into the analogue world.

The HP Sprocket costs R1 999 and comes with 10 sheets of photo paper in the box. Refills will cost you R199 for 20 sheets and R399 for 50 sheets, not exactly a bargain, but cheaper I’m sure than the outrageous price of traditional printer ink, for which you’d still have to buy photo paper if you wanted decent prints.

Follow Alan Cooper on Twitter @alanqcooper