With all the digital documenting going around, it’s hard not to be infected by the shutterbug disease. Gone are the days when you would admire your dress in the mirror, eat a meal ravenously once it’s laid on the table, or just simply marvel at the beauty of a full moon. If  you think it’s good, it should be captured. And once it’s captured, it should be shared to your network of virtual friends. I must admit, I’ve been infected by this disease. For more than a year now, I’ve been a slave to my phone camera taking pictures here and there and eagerly sharing them to my friends.

With my birthday just around the corner, I thought of getting myself an actual camera. But for some reason, I don’t wanna settle with the usual digicams. I want to buy something different — one that could stretch my creativity more without the high dependency on Picasa, Lightroom, or Instagram filters. Something that would be a perfect partner of my digital phone camera in documenting special events in my life. And one that could produce actual copies of the shots that I did, in all its imperfectness.

And so, today, I found myself spending hours and hours of my work free time looking at toy cameras on the internet. Toy cameras are such fun to use and very cute to carry around so you can easily understand their great charm on me. They’re quite different with the ones that we’re used to today. With a digicam, you can take pictures to your delight, may it be good or bad. The only thing that you have to worry about is your camera juice. But with these, there’s this small challenge of taking an actually good picture because once you click, you can never go back. It’ll automatically be embedded on the negatives inside. What you can only do is to wait for it to be developed.

Anyway, let me share to you my top 3 picks (a.k.a the ones that I can actually afford ;))

1. White Slim Angel Wide-Angle Camera – This uses 35mm films and has a 22m wide angle lens. It instantly produces saturated picturesque products with a hint of vignette. And because it is wide-angle it is perfect for outdoor photography. I can already imagine myself taking these with me to the beach!

2. Golden Half 35mm Camera – These adorable babies uses half the intended exposure format so it doubles your number of shots. In other words, it allows 2 shots in one frame. Now, how cool is that? For someone who’s a big fan of creating collages, this is a major plus. The images have a retro feel to them, too, which I love.

3. Fujifilm Instax Mini 7s – Who here is not charmed by polaroid cameras? Certainly not me. I just love how this thing works! This is great for taking artsy pictures on special occasions and during out-of-town travels. It only takes one snap to create an automatic souvenir.

So there you go.

Right now, I’m leaning towards getting the Instax. Although it is the most expensive, it is the most convenient because of the instant output. All I have to worry about are my friends sneaking the developed photographs away from me. Haha!

Thoughts?