Film and instant cameras you can still buy new

One shutter speed, one aperture, no meter and no focus ring, which leaves nothing to get wrong.

The H35 shoots half-frame, splitting each 35mm exposure down the middle. A 36-exposure roll returns 72 pictures. That single fact changes the economics of film more than any other on this page: the cost of a roll and its development is unchanged, and it is spread across twice as many frames.

The specification is four lines long. A 22mm lens at f/9.5, two elements in optical-grade acrylic. A fixed shutter at 1/100 second. Fixed focus. A built-in flash on a ring around the lens, and one AAA battery to fire it. There is no meter. The film you load and the weather you walk out into decide the exposure between them.

Check which one you are buying. Kodak sells this and an H35N alongside each other at similar prices, and the N is a different camera: f/8 instead of f/9.5, a glass element in place of one of the acrylic ones, a star filter and a bulb mode. Reviewers consistently find the N sharper. The listings rarely make the distinction obvious.

The body is ABS and weighs 100 grams, which is a third of the Fujifilm and a fifth of the Polaroid. It goes in a jacket pocket and stays there, and that is the argument for it. A camera you are carrying takes more photographs than a better camera you left at home.

The only camera here that will hold a shutter open for thirty seconds, and the only one whose prints are large enough to read across a room.

Polaroid's Now+ runs two lenses, 102.35mm and 94.96mm, and switches between them by itself depending on how close the subject is. Left alone the shutter runs from 1/200 of a second to one second. Connected to the phone app it runs to thirty seconds, plus a bulb mode, which is how the light-painting and double-exposure modes work.

Five push-on filters come in the box: starburst, red vignette, orange, yellow and blue. They sit in front of the lens and colour the film itself. The effect is in the print, permanently, and no edit put it there.

An i-Type pack holds eight photographs. A pack of Instax mini holds ten and costs less, and a 36-exposure roll through the Kodak returns 72 frames. So every press of this shutter is a real decision, which some people find focusing and others find paralysing.

It is also the largest object here by a distance: 150 by 112 by 96 millimetres and 451 grams empty, against 320 for the Leica and 100 for the Kodak. It takes i-Type and 600 film, charges over USB-C, and runs about fifteen packs between charges. Nothing about it is subtle, and the prints are the reason.

Coloured LEDs inside the body light the film as it develops, which puts the effect in the emulsion instead of in a filter.

Every other way of tinting an instant photograph happens in front of the lens. The Mini 99 does it from behind. Fujifilm puts the light behind the film, so the colour belongs to how the print developed. Holding something coloured in front of a cheaper lens will not reproduce it.

The controls are unusually deep for instant. Shutter speeds run from 1.8 seconds to 1/400, with a bulb mode that holds up to ten seconds. Exposure compensation runs four steps, from minus five-thirds of a stop to plus one. Focus is a manual three-position switch: 0.3 to 0.6 metres, 0.6 to 3, and 3 metres to infinity. The lens retracts, and it is a 60mm at f/12.7, which is slow. Indoors you are using the flash.

Prints are 62 by 46 millimetres, and packs hold ten. The camera is 340 grams without film and runs about ten packs on its NP-70S battery.

The trade against the Polaroid is size, both of the camera and of the print. Instax mini prints are roughly credit-card sized and Polaroid's are nearly square and much bigger. If the photograph is going in a wallet or on a fridge door, the smaller print is the right one. If it is going on a wall, it is not.

A digital camera that prints. You see the photograph on a screen and then choose whether to spend a sheet of film on it.

That is the entire case for the Sofort 2 and it is a strong one. Every other instant camera here commits film the moment the shutter fires, including the frames that are out of focus or have somebody blinking. This one holds about 45 pictures in internal memory, more on a microSD card at roughly 850 per gigabyte, and prints only what you pick.

The sensor is a 1/5-inch CMOS producing 2,560 by 1,920 pixels, which is 4.9 megapixels. That is well below any current phone and it does not matter much, because the output is a 62 by 46 millimetre print. The lens is a Leica Summar at 2.4mm f/2, about 28mm in full-frame terms, with automatic exposure from f/2 to f/16 and shutter speeds from a quarter of a second to 1/8000.

Ten film styles and ten lens effects combine into a hundred looks, previewed on a three-inch screen before anything reaches the film. The body is 123 by 87 by 44 millimetres and 320 grams, and the battery is good for around a hundred prints.

Here is the awkward part. It prints on the same 62 by 46 millimetre format as the Fujifilm above, and costs $139 more. What the money buys is the screen and the decision it lets you make, plus Leica build. Whether that is worth 139 dollars depends entirely on how much film you waste.

The first new 35mm film camera Pentax has built in almost twenty years, and the only one here designed from scratch instead of revived.

Pentax shoots half-frame like the Kodak, at 24 by 17 millimetres, so a 36-exposure roll gives 72 pictures and a 24-exposure roll gives 48. Unlike the Kodak it does this deliberately: frames come out vertical by default, which is the orientation a phone screen already trained everyone to shoot in.

The 17 is where the money goes. A 25mm f/3.5 lens, 37mm equivalent, three elements in three groups with HD coating. Zone focus across six marked distances, 0.25, 0.5, 1.2, 1.7 and 3 metres plus infinity, with the 0.25 setting close enough for macro. Shutter from 1/350 down to four seconds, plus bulb, across seven auto-exposure modes. An Albada bright-frame viewfinder rather than a plain window.

The build is the other half. Magnesium alloy top and bottom covers, a manual advance lever and manual rewind, and a 40.5mm filter thread on the front. It measures 127 by 78 by 52 millimetres and weighs 290 grams empty.

Nothing else on this page gives you exposure control on film. The Kodak has none. The three instant cameras develop whatever they captured, correct or not. So the $450 between this and the Kodak buys decisions, which is worth paying for only if you intend to make them.

Half-frame doubles your roll and halves your negative

Both 35mm cameras here shoot half-frame, and 72 pictures from one roll changes what film costs per picture. The trade is negative size. Half a frame carries half the detail, so big prints show grain that a full frame would not. For scanning, sharing and small prints it is invisible. For a large print it is the limit.

Instant film is priced per photograph, and the packs differ

A Polaroid i-Type pack holds eight. An Instax mini pack holds ten and is cheaper. That gap compounds fast: a weekend through the Polaroid costs several times a weekend through the Kodak. Work out what you will shoot in a month before choosing the format, because the camera is the small purchase.

A screen changes what instant photography is

The Leica is the only one that lets you look before you print. That removes the waste and it removes the gamble, and the gamble is what a lot of people are there for. Decide which of those two you actually want, because it is the only real difference between spending $250 and $389.

Automatic, or something to get wrong

The Kodak has one shutter speed and no meter. The Pentax has seven exposure modes and six focus zones. Both shoot the same film at the same frame size, and the pictures will not look alike. Control is the product here, and it is most of the $450 between them.

Cheapest, and the likeliest to be in a pocket when something happens: the Kodak, at 100 grams. Biggest prints and the only long exposures: the Polaroid. Effects that live in the emulsion: the Fujifilm. The Leica, if you hate wasting sheets. The Pentax, if you want controls and will learn them.

Start with the wait, not the camera. A week between pressing the shutter and seeing the picture is either the whole appeal or an unacceptable delay, and almost nobody is neutral about it. Answer that first and three of these five disappear on their own. For what else fits in the same pocket, see pocket-sized everyday carry.