Thermal Paper Camera Photography

How a toy camera is helping me fall back in love with photography

I was not quick to get a smartphone. I was impressed when the iPhone and Blackberry were becoming popular, but I just didn’t see the purpose. So I was happy enough with my flip phone and patiently waited to be convinced otherwise. Ultimately, the thing that convinced me was something that has arguably become the most important part of a mobile phone, after the flashlight: the camera. I knew they had cameras, but until I got to play with one and saw how easy it was, and that the quality was “decent,” I just didn’t think I would ever use it.

Once I finally got to play with an iPhone with a decent camera, I was smitten. It was so easy to take photos and share them with people. After I bought one, my relationship with photo-taking changed. My point-and-click digital camera had already replaced my film camera, but I had to decide to take it with me. Now, if I just had my phone, I always had a camera. Slowly but surely, my relationship with photography changed. I would take dozens of photos just because I could, and despite my best efforts, once I had taken these photos, I rarely looked at them. Maybe I might share them, but mostly I treated them like reference material and didn’t appreciate them.

I started to recently feel sad about that. Perhaps I wasn’t very good at taking photos, but I enjoyed the act of thinking about what I wanted to photograph: angles, distance, framing. Then, one picture and done—I moved along. Not snapping 50 photos, rapidly snapping and then hoping filters and AI tools would improve them. So I started to make plans to change how I took photos. It wasn’t that I wanted to stop taking photos with my phone, but I wanted a slower, more deliberate experience.

First, I tried using my phone to do just that, but it’s hard to be disciplined when you have nearly unlimited room to take photos. Then I considered going back to a film or standalone digital camera. At some point, I started looking at instant cameras. My family had a Polaroid when I was a kid and, while the quality of the photos wasn’t great, having a physical print so quickly was extremely satisfying. It was while looking at these instant cameras that I started to see kid’s cameras that printed photos on receipt paper using thermal printing.

This might be exactly what I was looking for. It checked off all sorts of boxes that had arisen once I started thinking about this, and some that I hadn’t.

• A standalone camera with no internet capability.

• Simple, easy-to-use point-and-click.

• Instant printed images that I could enjoy right away, and that slowed me down by forcing me to take a moment to consider each photo after I had taken it.

• Inexpensive to purchase the camera, and the added bonus of being very affordable to print per image.

I went online to search for a camera, and as I mentioned, most of these cameras are made for kids. While I love the idea of taking photos using a device that looked like a lime green cat’s face, I was hoping for something a little more sedate. That’s when I came across the all-black Yehtta Camera on Amazon. It was $36 and came with the camera, a USB-C wire for charging and moving photos (they also get stored digitally), a carrying strap, and three rolls of thermal receipt paper for printing. The camera is rechargeable, and the printer is built right into the unit. So once you take a photo, you can either review it before printing or have it print out automatically. You might waste more paper just printing, but I found that to be the mode I wanted to operate in.

The camera is subtle. It looks like a toy version of a real camera, and it has a 2.4-inch IPS screen, 1080p high-resolution video capability, 16x digital zoom, and a fill light on the front. The photos are taken in color, but the printing is black-and-white only. I thought this might be something I would get tired of after a while, but instead, I really enjoy it. It reminds me of the photos that you would get off a Game Boy Printer (same technology). The camera has other features, like games, various filters, and an MP3 player. I have zero interest in any of these features, so I haven’t used them. They feel like the manufacturer wanted to add some bullet points to the product description, and I would be much happier if I could delete them or at least remove them from the menu.

It has a 2000 mAh capacity battery, which allows for three hours of continuous shooting after fully charged. That’s about 20,000 photos or two hours of continuous camera video. It also comes with a 32 GB SD card, which can hold 60,000 photos, and the camera screen can view the photos and videos in the memory card. So you don’t need to ever hook it up to a computer unless you want to remove or back up the photos.

The photos print on receipt paper. You can choose from three different printing densities, which will give you photos that range from light gray-and-white to solid black-and-white. The resulting images can be quite striking.

And sometimes not perfect, but still wonderful.

When I took the camera out the first day, I wasn’t sure how often I would use it; all I knew was that I wanted to feel something different when I snapped a pic. As soon as the first image came scrolling out of the printer, I knew I loved it. The quality isn’t very clear, but there is something in the smudgy smoothness that I found very compelling. That day out, I proceeded to take lots of photos. Here are some samples that show how it captures different settings and things. Click on an image to see it in a larger size.

A gallery of thermal printed photos.

This little toy camera has brought a refreshing change to how I interact with photography. It’s not about abandoning modern technology, but about reclaiming a sense of mindfulness in how I capture moments. By slowing down, thinking more deliberately about each shot, and holding a physical print in my hands, I’ve rediscovered the joy of photography. It’s a small, affordable experiment that’s reminded me of something I’d forgotten: the magic of a photo isn’t always in its clarity or perfection, but in the experience of creating it and the emotions it evokes. In a world where we’re often overwhelmed by digital clutter, it feels good to create something tangible, something I can actually hold on to.