>>4499684>I'm also trying to buy a gift for a friend who's into photography.Honestly gifting for this hobby is hard. You're better off gifting / organising trips for them to actually put the gear to work. My GF bankrolls some light trips here and there out of the goodness of her heart because it encourages us to go see shit so the photos end up being of memories. Much better than her buying me random aliexpress photo shit.
But if you're going it, just buy an instax.
It's successful and widely supported. The film can be bought anywhere, and the mid-range cameras aren't actually half bad. The cheap shit like the mini is really barebones, but the ones with smartphone integration and flash memory are quite neat.
>I'm assuming these cameras now also have memory cards so you're not stuck just using the built-in printer?NOT ALL DO. Primarily the lower grade ones, but I'm not intimately familiar with their current lineup. I know the one I got my GF (mini 12) was print-only with no saving to memory. Beware and look for the feature to be explicitly stated.
>How do the photos look scaled-up?It's film, albeit instant film, so not that bad unless you go retarded with it and expect 4k or some nonsense.