The Cameras

Etikez Funshot20 Instant Print Camera, Casa McCormick, Strathmore, AB, 2026-03-16.jpg
This isn't about who has the best camera. The most expensive camera used for this blog cost $24 CAD with free shipping. Any Hasselblad-owning, pixel-peeping pervies gonna get a black eye around here. You in Da Hood now, bitchez.

Masterbee P79 Instant Print Camera

  • Cost: $13 CAD
  • Claimed resolution: "48 MP" (it is not 48 MP)
  • Actual resolution: Looks like a drunk 2 MP upscaled by someone who hates you
  • Video: 1080p (allegedly)
  • Print: Thermal, black and white, no ink
  • Print format: Longer aspect ratio strip
  • Screen: 2.4 inch IPS
  • Storage: 32GB SD card included
  • Modes: Grayscale printing, dot matrix printing, 3 colour depth levels
  • Extra features: Selfie camera, games, music player, filters, frames
  • Target audience: Children aged 3 to 12
  • Actual user: A 57-year-old man with a pacemaker and a dockworker beanie

The Masterbee is a plastic toy camera designed for kids that spits out thermal prints on receipt paper. It claims 48 megapixels in the same way I claim to be 6 feet tall — technically a number has been stated, but nobody believes it. The prints are lo-fi, dithered, and look like they were faxed from 1991. They are glorious.

Etikez Funshot20 Instant Print Camera

  • Cost: $13 CAD
  • Claimed resolution: "48 MP" (still not 48 MP, they all claim this)
  • Actual resolution: Same drunk 2 MP, different plastic shell
  • Video: 1080p HD (hah!)
  • Print: Thermal, black and white, no ink
  • Print format: 4:3 cropped, slightly different from the Masterbee
  • Screen: 2.4 inch
  • Storage: 32GB SD card included
  • Modes: Grayscale, time-lapse, continuous shooting, 6x zoom
  • Extra features: Flash, filters, frames, games, front-facing camera
  • Target audience: Children aged 4 to 12
  • Actual user: Same 57-year-old man, still wearing the beanie

The FunShot 20 is the Masterbee's slightly different cousin. Same thermal printing technology, same wildly optimistic megapixel claims, same delightful awfulness. The 4:3 crop gives a different aspect ratio than the Masterbee's longer strip, which means the same scene looks different depending on which cheap camera I pulled out of my tactical pants pocket.

Q10 Printer Camera (Shenzhen Tianyuan Huitong Technology)

  • Cost: $24 CAD
  • Claimed resolution: 48 MP (narrator: it is not 48 MP)
  • Actual resolution: The usual drunk 2 MP. You know the drill by now.
  • Print: Thermal, black and white, no ink
  • Print format: Strip, same spool format as the Masterbee
  • Focus: Fixed. The ring on the lens is decorative. It does not focus. It is a lie made of plastic.
  • Design: Rainbow stripes, landscape orientation, looks like a Polaroid OneStep had a budget knockoff child in Shenzhen
  • Did I mention the stripes? IT HAS FUCKING STRIPES!!!!
  • The stripes also make my camera openly gay. Has YOUR camera come out yet? Hm? HM?

The Q10 costs $24 because someone in a factory decided rainbow stripes were worth an $11 premium over a camera that takes identical photos. They were not wrong — I bought it. The decorative focus ring is my favourite feature because it commits so fully to the bit. It turns. It does nothing. It is the camera equivalent of a sports car spoiler on a minivan. I respect the audacity.

Binbinyouli Instant Print Camera (Shenzhen Binbinyouli Technology)

  • Cost: $17 CAD
  • Claimed resolution: 48 MP (you already know)
  • Actual resolution: See above. And above. And the camera before that.
  • Print: Thermal, black and white, no ink
  • Print format: Strip, same spool format
  • Focus: Fixed. There is no focus ring to lie to you this time. At least it's honest.
  • Design: Cream/ivory, portrait orientation, rounded Instax-adjacent body, aspirationally premium
  • Shutter button: Back of the camera, right of the display

The Binbinyouli is trying. You can see it trying. The rounded cream body wants to be an Instax Mini. The portrait orientation wants to be taken seriously. It costs $17, which in this camera's universe is basically luxury pricing. The shutter button is on the back, to the right of the display, which is exactly where no one who has ever used a camera would put it and exactly where someone who has seen a photograph of a camera might think it goes. Flanking it are two plastic pegs that present as buttons. They are not buttons. They do not press. They do not do anything. They are pegs. I have no explanation for the pegs. I have accepted the pegs. I bought it anyway because science doesn't fund itself.

Full frontal, Dongguan Optical X-10, Strathmore, AB, 2026-09-21.png

One megapixel, Dongguan Optical X-10, Strathmore, AB, 2026-09-21.png


Dongguan Optical X-10

  • Cost: $39.51 (it was $20 a year ago before The Cheeto slapped tariffs on everything and started a war he couldn't win).
  • Claimed resolution: 1 MP. One. It says "1M" and it means it.
  • Actual resolution: For once, roughly the truth. It promised you a potato and handed you a potato.
  • Resolution options: Exactly one. No menu of lies, no fantasy 48. One megapixel or nothing.
  • Video: 1080p (this is where it quietly starts fibbing again)
  • Cyclic Record: 3-minute loops — this thing had a past life as a dashcam and isn't ashamed of it
  • Print: 4:3 aspect grayscale or pixelelated printed poopies as per your preference
  • Design: Boxy pale body, concentric-ring lens that looks like it should focus and almost certainly doesn't
  • Actual user: The same 57-year-old man with the pacemaker and the beanie, weeping with gratitude at being told the truth for once

The X-10 is the only honest camera on this page. Four plastic liars came before it, each one bellowing "48 MP!!!" like a used-car salesman having a stroke. Then the X-10 shows up, opens its menu, and just says: 1M. One megapixel. No stripes come out to distract you. No exclamation marks. Just a small honest number sitting there like it's got nothing to hide — because it doesn't.

And here's the kicker: it's the only setting. The other cameras at least extend you the courtesy of a lie to choose from — 12M, 48M, pick your delusion. The X-10 offers you one megapixel and no alternative. You cannot inflate it. You cannot pretend. It has looked in the mirror, accepted exactly what it is, and it refuses to let you delude yourself either. That's not a camera. That's a monk.

Here's the thing I only worked out by pixel-peeping my own garbage: they're all one megapixel. Every camera on this page. Shoot the same object with all five, blow the JPEGs up to the same size, and you can't tell them apart; because there's nothing to tell apart. The four "48 MP" cameras are one megapixel in a costume, upscaling a tiny sensor and calling it a miracle. The X-10 is the same one megapixel. It just doesn't lie about it. It's not the worst camera on the wall. It's the same as all of them but it's the only honest one.

All five cameras produce prints that fade over time because thermal paper is ephemeral by nature. I photograph or scan the prints to preserve them before they disappear. Much like life itself, the originals are temporary. The digital record is what remains.

Why these cameras?

Because they cost between $13 and $24. Because they fit in a large-ish pocket. Because they print instantly. Because the limitations force you to see differently. Because nobody in the history of photography has ever obsessed over the dynamic range of a Masterbee P79 or argued about the bokeh on a Q10 whose focus ring doesn't work.

If you need proof that the camera doesn't matter, you're looking at it.

Every image on Pixhellated started as a tiny thermal print from one of these four cameras. No DSLRs, no mirrorless, no phones. Just plastic, thermal paper, and whatever the camera gods decided to give me that day.