Turns out the Ilford Ilfocolor Rapid Half Frame disposable has some opposition. Meet the Hayamou Half-Frame Disposable. At the time the cheapest half frame on the market and possibly the easiest disposable I’ve ever had for reloading. But optically things are not so great

I suspect this camera is not just available with Hayamou branding. In fact there is no branding on the clear plastic wrap it came in (no box). It’s available in a range of pastel colours, a black one and the rather fetching transparent one.
I picked mines up from their factory store and I’ve seen it listed under their branding elsewhere. The model some times is listed as the
DC-032. Hayamou sell a full frame version as well
The tl:dr
What’s good
- Reloadable in daylight
- Transparent version
- The crapness of the set up almost gives a bokeh like effect if you get it right
What’s not so good
- 200 ISO film needs good light
- Messed up focus
- Even the half decent shots are soft
- Not many bangs for your bucks
- e-waste
Looks
The body design doesn’t look a million miles different to the Harman disposable and a million other cheap disposables. The lens Bezel is bulbous and the film cartridge end makes up a grip. Unlike the Harman and most other disposables, there’s no little door to pop off to get the film cartridge out. You need to pop the clips on either side of the camera to take off but the flash wiring is a bit away from you.

The top plate has a shutter button and an easy to see counter
The transparent version is quite cool if you like to see the inner working (the rear of the camera is just black)
Spec
This varies from seller to seller even of the Hayamou
All say it has a 28mm lens which make sense. That works out as the equivalent as shooting with a 40.3mm full frame. Hayamou say it’s f/8 and 1/100 aperture shutter combo but other sites say f/9 1/120. This is perhaps splitting lo-fi hairs.

Now if Hayamou set this camera correctly for half frame if the lens is focused at 4.9m the hyperfocal everything should be in reasonable focus from about 2.4m to infinity (the so called acceptable Depth of Field or DoF)
But they didn’t……
Flash is powered by 1xAA that comes with the camera
Inside the camera you have a curved film plane and literally 2 little plastic masks held on by felt tape. They are hand applied and this explains a little why we get odd angles and differences between frame sizes between the 2 models i tested.
And the film ?
What’s more worrying is the film frame count. Haymou say their version which I bought has a 12 Exposure roll which should be good for 22-24 half frames. Another site says 17 exposures. I got 17 & 19 on the 2 cameras. The film turned out to be 200ISO Kodak ColorPlus (from edge markings of Kodak 200-8)
Inside the film plane is curved. They’ve basically taken a full frame tweaked the gearing. Then they’ve stuck on with a bit of felted tape 2 blinders on the edge of the frame. these varied between the cameras and the one took slightly narrowed images. Neither was glued on straight on one edge.
And why are your shots off centre ?
The viewfinder sits off centre over the lens maening shots are all off centre. In addition they never altered it from the finder for the full frame and it’s still in landscape when the camera shots in portrait orientation. The view from the finder looks something like this image I took on my phone
But you get something like this

With closer shots Parallax error makes that shift worse
Use
Wind on frame and click, repeat. When finished you can unload yourself by popping open the 2 side clips
Reloading is easy. As ever I take no responsibility for doing this but you don’t stick screwdrivers near the electrics. That said if you’ve a heart condition, pacemaker etc then it isn’t worth the slight risk. Your more likely to damage the camera in the process.
As typical with most disposable the camera winds film back into the cartridge. The loading spool is detachable and you start by sliding you film leader into its’s slot. It can take a few goes and then wind some film around this before slotting both the take up and you film cartridge back in. I’d use a slotted screwdriver to keep the tension on the loading spool (there a slot on the base) while you close the rear.
Keeping the screwdriver steady, take a small probe and on the front beside the grip towards the top there is a small hole you’ll want to push your probe in there and try to dislodge the winding lock mechanism that stops you from winding backward. You should with that probe in position be able to wind film onto the loading spool by turning the screwdriver (make sure you turn it anticlockwise to load). you may find the mechanism stays disengaged until you wind on and you may obliterate it completely. But this is a rare example of a disposable you can reload in the light.
You could of course also do it the old school way in the complete dark of changing bag , dark room, or under the duvet of a room with the curtains drawn and lights out. Just load up the loading spool out of the camera by winding the film on to it. Insert that in an (you’ll likely need to keep it steady using the screwdriver as above) and position the cartridge back in the other side and try popping on the rear cover.
I don’t have a sense the camera will last doing the 2 driver method.
All rolls shot here went to Photo Hippo for processing.
Hayamou Half Frame : The Results

ohh such a disappointment. They really goofed here.
How They goofed
Making a simple disposable should be child’s play. You just try and get your lens to focus on the hyperfocal point
But the trouble is they set their focus a bit closer. In a weird slightly geeky way I get the goof. This is a camera that was basically a tweaked full frame disposable. So the focal point should stay the same ?
Nope
For a full frame 28mm f/8 you’d focus at around 3.4m to give you a DoF of 1.7m to infinity. But set the same difference on the same lens and aperture at half frame and you get a DoF of just 2 to 11m.
And I think that what they did. Take this Diptych. Flower are almost sharp about 1-1.5m from me on the right. But the shot on the left of the Bridge and St Michael’s is totally out of focus.

And you can see things on this Diptych more at the limits

And to be honest I often think cheap camera makers often set their focus slightly closer than the hyperfocal because they want to optimise the close to medium range. And that seems to have happened here as the sharpest shot I took was this street sign about 1-1.5m

And Other issues
Both camera I had the same issues. I think the one that took the Tesco shots above was less fussy slightly at distance but not by much. There was a difference in frame separation between the 2.
Attempting to look beyond that you see significant fall off towards the edges. it’s no worse than many an other disposable or reloadable disposable. The camera pincushion distorts but not drastically so.
There’s some fringing going on as well
Flash
It’s usual fare. Close up it does well.

But it drops off rapidly even at around 2m it’s power is dropping
How does it fare in cost ?
It was cheaper when I bought them (about £14 with tax). But Currently (Jan 2025) this will set you back £19.45 on AliExpress after taxes and with free postage. That puts it on a par with the Kodak FunSaver, the disposable to beat. That will give you 27 to 39 shots (depending on what version you get). Those shots are much more likely to be useable and the camera is well known for it’s reloadability. The processing cost is likely to be the same if not cheaper than the 17 or so half frame image you get from the Hayamou.

The Ilford Ilfocolor Rapid half frame also sells for about £16 at moment on the ‘Bay. Optically way better than the Hayamou Half Frame and delivers about it’s target 54 shots and it has better ISO Film.

Final Thoughts on the Hayamou Half Frame
Just don’t. If you must have a half frame disposable get the Ilford Ilfocolor one. Just look at that Diptych taken on the Ilfocolor above. Then look one taken on the Hayamou
The left belt case is about as good as focus gets but even the bridge about 20m away is soft and woolly. The 200 ISO film is okay and exposes well enough on this shot but lacks the flex of 400 ISO film that most decent disposable have. The frames are squint and I’ll also get about 19 half frames top versus over 50 on the Ilfocolor.

If reloadability bothers you get a Lomography simple use or BHF-01 if you really want the cheapest lo-fi Half Frame (and you can do way better than the BHF see below). The both do make more sense as they’re designed to be reloaded. and whilst they probably won’t last for years and tears of use they’ll last longer than this POS.
But really they screwed up the focal point. They should have adjusted for half frame but I don’t think they did. You might be able to pull so weird lo-fi almost Boken shots but whilst anything under 5 metres is okay, everything else is softer than a Mr Whippy.
There is no logical reason to buy this in 2025
Other options
I listed every half frame in production last year (including this one). This makes the Lomography Lomourette look good and that won my worst camera of 2024. I’ve already suggested the Ilford Ilfocolor if you must go half frame disposable. It’s really good. The BHF-01 is the most budget reloadable although trying to get a half frame dubblefilm clone would be better like the Escura Snaps 35 half.

That’s before we’ve touched on the Brilliance that is Reto’s Kodak Ektar H35 series with the H35N winning the I can’t believe it’s not full frame award.