How do I make a photo look like a disposable camera?

Choose it above: it goes through a disposable’s plastic lens onto Minilab 400 at once, and you can switch to Golden 200 and download it. In an editor, the parts are dark, soft corners, a little color fringing at the edges, lifted blacks, a 400 film’s colors and grain, and a print exposed by a lab. Shot on a disposable, the flash does the rest.

What makes disposable camera photos look the way they do?

Mostly the lens: one plastic element at about f/10, soft and dark in the corners, with no coating, so bright light veils the shadows. Then the film, a 400 color negative, and the minilab print, which sets every print’s exposure from the negative. Indoors and at night, the small flash: a bright subject in front of a dark background.

Can the filter add a flash?

No. A flash lights what is near the camera and leaves the rest dark; once a photo is taken, nothing in it says how far each thing was, so a flash added afterwards would be a guess. In Clack, the flash key fires the phone’s flash, and the photo is made through the Disposable recipe as it is taken.

Does it add a date stamp?

No, and Clack has none either. A date stamp is an orange date printed in the corner of the frame; the filter makes only what the lens, the film and the print do.

Is this a Huji filter?

No. Huji Cam is a separate camera app, known for a disposable look with a date stamp. This filter is Clack’s: a plastic lens and film models built from the films’ data sheets. Clack is not affiliated with Huji.

Is my photo uploaded?

No. It is decoded and drawn by your browser, on your device, and the page sends nothing anywhere.

Is the disposable camera filter free?

Yes. No sign-up and no watermark; the photos you make are yours. The download is 1600 px on its long side, sized for posting and sharing.

Disposable camera filter: your photo through a disposable’s plastic lens, on film

Guide · Updated 4 November 2026

Choose a photo above and it comes out the way a disposable camera makes one: through a single plastic lens, dark and soft in the corners, with color fringes at the edges and a veil of glare, onto Minilab 400 (based on Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400) with hard contrast and coarse grain, printed as a minilab prints it. Golden 200 (based on Kodak Gold 200) is the warmer choice. Download it as a JPEG. It runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

It is the Disposable recipe from Clack, a film camera app for Android, ported to the browser: the same lens, the same film and the same print. It adds no flash and no date stamp, which the last sections explain. Clack is not affiliated with Fujifilm or Kodak.

01 · Steps

How to make a photo look like a disposable camera

Choose a photo. Any JPEG, PNG or WebP from your phone or computer (HEIC in Safari). It is read in your browser and never uploaded.
Pick the film. Minilab 400 (based on Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400) is Clack’s Disposable recipe; Golden 200 (based on Kodak Gold 200) is warmer.
Set the exposure. The lab’s exposure is set for you, from the photo. Make it lighter or darker in thirds of a stop.
Download. A JPEG up to 1600 px on its long side. Hold “Hold for the original” to compare first.

02 · The look

What makes the disposable camera look

A disposable camera is a roll of film in a plastic box with a one-piece lens, one shutter speed and a flash. Its look comes from those parts, and a filter on a finished photo can do some of them:

Part	On a disposable	In this filter
The lens	One plastic element, about 32 mm at f/10, uncoated	Ported from Clack: dark, soft corners, color fringes, a little barrel, a veil of glare
The film	A 400 color negative film	Minilab 400 or Golden 200, hard contrast, coarse grain
The print	A minilab sets each print’s exposure from the negative	A printer light reads your photo, dark corners and all
The flash	A small flash, on for most indoor shots	Not added: a flash cannot be put into a photo afterwards
Focus and exposure	Fixed focus, one shutter speed, one aperture	Your photo’s own, kept
A date stamp	On some cameras	Not added; Clack has none either

03 · The lens

The plastic lens

The lens is most of the look. A phone’s lens has several elements, each correcting the others; a disposable’s is one piece of plastic, about 32 mm at f/10 over a 35 mm frame, with nothing correcting it. Clack models it as light in front of the film, so everything after (the film’s grain, its curve, the print) takes the dark corners and the soft ones as a negative would:

Light falloff: The cos⁴ law at 34° off the axis, times the lens barrel’s own cut: 1.5 stops darker at the corners, 0.9 at the middle of the long edges, before the print’s contrast.
Softness: A blur that grows with the square of the distance from the middle, as the plastic’s field curves away from the flat film: about a third of a pixel in the middle of a 1600 px photo, about 2 px at the corners, longer round the middle than along the radius, so corners smear in a circle.
Color fringes: Red drawn in and blue pushed out towards the corners: lateral color, one uncorrected element’s.
Barrel distortion: 2 %, the corners held: the middle is a little larger and straight lines near the edges bow out.
Glare: 4 % of the photo’s average light spread evenly over it, so the blacks lift most in a bright scene, as two uncoated surfaces do.

The lab sees the dark corners too. A minilab’s printer light reads the whole negative, so a frame with dark corners reads as thin and prints about a third of a stop lighter, as Clack’s printer light does. Your photo is a phone’s, sharp to the corners, so the phone’s sharpening is left off: it belongs to the phone’s lens, which this one replaces.

Not modeled: the fixed focus (your photo keeps its own) and the fixed exposure, about 1/125 s at f/10 (your photo keeps its own; the Exposure slider is the lab’s lighter or darker).

04 · The film

Minilab 400 or Golden 200

Minilab 400, based on Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400, is the film Fujifilm’s own disposable loads, and the film of Clack’s Disposable recipe: punchy, with green shadows, printed on Fujifilm Crystal Archive paper. Golden 200, based on Kodak Gold 200, is the warmer consumer film, printed on Kodak Edge paper. Both are developed one stop harder than normal (pushed), as the recipe sets it, which raises the contrast and brings coarser grain with it, and both are modeled from their makers’ published curves. For either film without the plastic lens, or the other six, use the film filter.

05 · The difference

A filter on a finished photo, and a disposable in Clack

A filter starts from a photo the phone has already finished: its white balance set, its contrast added (which the filter undoes first, as measured across phones), and no flash where there was none. A disposable’s film has no white balance at all: it is balanced for daylight, so lamps print orange and shade prints blue. The filter keeps the white balance your phone chose.

In Clack the Disposable recipe is made as you shoot: the white balance held at daylight as the film’s is, the plastic lens in front of the camera’s straight frame on phones that allow it, the flash on when you want it, and the photo at the camera’s full size. In the recipe editor the plastic lens is a setting of its own, in the Lens section, on any film. Join the list to hear when Clack is on Google Play.

Questions

How do I make a photo look like a disposable camera?: Choose it above: it goes through a disposable’s plastic lens onto Minilab 400 at once, and you can switch to Golden 200 and download it. In an editor, the parts are dark, soft corners, a little color fringing at the edges, lifted blacks, a 400 film’s colors and grain, and a print exposed by a lab. Shot on a disposable, the flash does the rest.
What makes disposable camera photos look the way they do?: Mostly the lens: one plastic element at about f/10, soft and dark in the corners, with no coating, so bright light veils the shadows. Then the film, a 400 color negative, and the minilab print, which sets every print’s exposure from the negative. Indoors and at night, the small flash: a bright subject in front of a dark background.
Can the filter add a flash?: No. A flash lights what is near the camera and leaves the rest dark; once a photo is taken, nothing in it says how far each thing was, so a flash added afterwards would be a guess. In Clack, the flash key fires the phone’s flash, and the photo is made through the Disposable recipe as it is taken.
Does it add a date stamp?: No, and Clack has none either. A date stamp is an orange date printed in the corner of the frame; the filter makes only what the lens, the film and the print do.
Is this a Huji filter?: No. Huji Cam is a separate camera app, known for a disposable look with a date stamp. This filter is Clack’s: a plastic lens and film models built from the films’ data sheets. Clack is not affiliated with Huji.
Is my photo uploaded?: No. It is decoded and drawn by your browser, on your device, and the page sends nothing anywhere.
Is the disposable camera filter free?: Yes. No sign-up and no watermark; the photos you make are yours. The download is 1600 px on its long side, sized for posting and sharing.

Sources

The lens is Clack’s model of a disposable’s plastic element (its numbers are first estimates, still to be tuned), and the films are Clack’s film models, compiled from these data sheets by the app’s own code; the filter is its shader, ported to WebGL2.