Most of you will have heard of the Paper Shoot. Arguable the most successful Lo-Fi Digital brand of the last decade. But there been a big falling out in the land of the eco-friendly, swappable covers. Which has been a tad messy and led to a potential new camera. Time to spill the beans
Paper Shoot – remind me ?
Okay in brief Paper Shoot began life in Taiwan 11 years ago. It was the brainchild of George Lin. George developed a simple co friendly camera that used recycled fiberglass on it’s PCB and used a paper card cover
It outlived a failed Kickstarter but you can still see the promo for that
The paper would be replaced by stone paper a much more durable calcium carbonate and resin combo. This does breakdown with UV light over time. And the wee seed disappeared (I suspect due to neurotic Western countries invasive species rules). The camera has gone through several upgrades (I shot the 13MP model a few years ago but that been replaced at least twice)
And you get a fun lo-fi camera with no LCD and the only control is you can switch between 4 filter setting. Newer models can do 10 second burst videos if connected to a charging block. The sensor seems to be pinched from a mobile phone and the 13MP was quite good.
Okay so who is fighting who
So the Paper shoot company is based in Taiwan and it was struggle to get their cameras in some countries. For ease I’m gonna call them PS HQ moving forward. Back in 2021 when I bought the 13MP version I had 2 choices to get it to the UK. Either buy it direct but run the Russian Roulette of UK customs as the company then didn’t do import charges. Or as I did buy from a US Camera supplier like B&H who but charged a US international shipping.
But thing were already changing. Paper Shoot had already starting to do distributor partnerships
And this is where some Canadians come in
Gillian Gallant and Jack Bissant set up what was initially the North American distributor. And for a while things seemed rosy.
I’ll give that company some due credit. They were much slicker than PS HQ on the socials. For ease we’ll call them PS USA (I know they’re Canadian but its quicker) and they did probably a huge amount in the Americas and later UK to raise brand awareness
The PS USA would be given rights to sell in all the Americas and later the UK and Italy.
I get the UK – look no-one likes dealing with us since Brexit (and to the muppets who voted for it – you still queue in the same lines coming back into Blighty as everyone else, lots of those nice Europeans who came to prop up our Health and care systems when home and migration numbers continued to rise – so that worked well then)
Not sure what Italy did though.
And all seemed rosy for a few years
But at the end of August things went Nuclear
When two tribes go to war….
On the 20th of August PS HQ yanked their agreement with PS USA. I can’t remember where I first became aware but PS USA had the initial lion share of social coverage claiming they had been betrayed by PS HQ
It wasn’t heaped on when PS USA released a series of short videos criticising PS HQ. These weren’t that engaging and pretty self satisfying. Thankfully you no longer have to endure these.
And you’ll struggle to find much evidence of their views now Almost all the social media stuff has gone. I wish I’d screen shot more. I suspect it related a little to do with final settlements and and a little to do with legal nudges. PS HQ has taken over most of the streams and the former PS USA has moved onto a new company name as we’ll get to. Oddly the old Paper Shoot UK insta feed is still a source of the some of the debated items (more on that later). Although I suspect it’ll get knocked off or incorporated and cleaned up by the globbal wing soon.
Gillian Galland’s Linkedin is about the only place you can see any lengthy comments from that side of the business.
That still describe PS USA as the unwilling innocent victims. She also claimed that in the statement provided by PS HQ “They released my home address as well as team member’s names with no consideration for privacy.”
I’m not going to get into the specifics of that point and where it is or the hoops to get it. But that information in freely available and legally required to be accessible online. It is used to illustrate a point by PS HQ but I suspect if PS HQ were based in the UK or the EU that may not have been as obvious in the statement.
But the rest of the point about being a sweet wee innocent hard done company does fall a bit by the wayside.
Big Trouble In Lo-Fi Format
PS HQ from what I have seen avoid making any antagonistic statements unlike the North American company. In fact it was Americans doing the running on the negative comments . And even PS HQ released their major statement is about their only outward critique. It’s a long ‘un but we’ll concentrate on the 3 main points.
- Violations of the multi-party contract include significant issues such as cross-regional sales, unauthorized use of the brand, and creating unauthorized merchandise in China without permission.
- A pattern of dishonesty and public misrepresentation regarding their role within Paper Shoot, and discomfort around their marketing of our products.
- Unauthorized attempts to manufacture digital cameras under our brand name, in direct violation of the original contract.
Now as I’ll show those points are almost all right and have proven to be accurate. Peta Pixel has also picked up on this and alleged insider reports on Reddit which make interesting reading.
They also rebut some of the other counterclaims made by PS USA in that post but I’ll for brevity not discuss those per se. As whilst some are relevant to these core arguments, others feel a bit more like 2 sided minor tales.
Unauthorised merch and the brand ?
The first point is defo true. Even now you can buy Paper shoot looking accessory and merch items from the former PS USA on the likes of Amazon. But these aren’t PS HQ approoved products and have nothing to do with the global paper shoot business.
And many of these had the subtle changed logo made earlier this year by PS USA. It’s hard to spot these and show these now but this from the Paper shoot UK feed. notice the e on the USA version of of the logo (and those cases…). The company often would use that pink rectangle logo as well
Whereas the corporate logo should look more like this. Notice the the leaf and the more standard e.
And it wasn’t just the Logo. There was a host of non authorised merch – tote bags, funny little pin badges, lens caps and paper shoot cases and as well as other items. The badge you can see maybe just goofing. But cases which you can see above and caps with a non corporate standard logo ?
It’s subtle and the earliest I can trace now is on May on the PS UK insta stream . But clearly the logo was shifting in breach of the agreement as was unofficial merch
The advertising in other areas thing is a bit more nuanced and I’ll cut PS USA some slack here. If you do check out their point on Google ads, yes ads did appear in some European and other markets. But They are all in English and it’s likely the company they used for Ads (most likely Google) may not have been correctly set to delineate. It doesn’t look purposeful to me.
Did they misrepresent ?
Look I know the history of the company. I first used a paper shoot just as the US distributor was starting work. But you’d have though that PS US and its boss Gillian Gallant were the actual brains behind the whole thing not the distributor. And indeed George Lin was knocked off their about info for periods of time.
Now there’s also a lot more stuff in the background which depending on your views was dubious or okay practice. This included PS USA Trade marketing the name Paper Shoot Camera in Canada in 2022. PS HQ point out that actually they in their 2021 agreement would hold the trade mark. I guess the folk in Canada could have argued they were just protecting the brand but offering to sell the ™ to PS HQ when things went south for $50,000 seems a bit of dick move given a Canadian trade mark registration cost around $500 although I suspect the whole legal process would cost about 2-3 times that.
And the stuff about a Camera ?
Yeah so this is what wound up Taiwan I think more than anything else. They’d become aware that PS USA were in talks with a company in China in April to create a new camera. And that has been cross confirmed on the reddit post by a former employee.
Now again in the interest of fairness it was unclear if that was going to be marked under the Paper Shoot brand as PS HQ feared or different branding. But the product has obviously been in development as already within a few weeks of the dissolution the former PS USA company have started taking preorders. And they have pre-release models in the wild already. And that camera will be a direct competitor to the Paper Shoot,.
So I’d say on balance the folk in Taiwan had a point.
And this takes us to the Cappy Camera
Sounds a bit like Cr…..
By the start of October Paper Shoot the American distributor largely disappeared – I say largely as you can still reach it’s site and UK equivalent but these redirect to the Cappy camera website.
Methinks they did go with moniker as a play on crappy cameras ‘cos there really is almost other reason. And I get it lots of us lo-fi fans wear the crappy camera badge with pride. The only other reason is if like me you spent the equivalent of a month or 2 of waking hour time playing Fallout 4, where Cappy is a recurrent motif in Nuka Cola’s advertising.

Tunnel snakes rule !!!
Cappy Cameras claims there new camera isn’t a copy of the paper shoot but it has some of the features they liked from that. So it’s eco cred, interchangeable case on a slim line camera with no LCD and a choice of 4 filters (which you change using a switch)
Where have I heard that before ?
It also has expansion to have addition filters and add on lenses. Strangely the ones for the paper shoot may fit. So that’s new isn’t it ?
it does have a flash unlike the paper shoot. At least that’s something. and the battery is built in (a backward step if you ask me)
So yeah they had been about launch a new camera. And given how developed this is and lets be honest at best a hommage at worst a knock of the paper shoot. It does looks like the folks in Taiwan had a point.
So what does this mean for the market
It is in no doubt bad news for Paper Shoot in the short term, but they do have a loyal following. There are brand loyal fans siding with both wings of the former alliance but my sense is Paper Shoot has come out of this a bit Rosier looking at it objectively. that said Cappy carries forward some 440+K insta followers v Paper Shoot Official’s 12+K
It’ll come down to how good the Cappy is and how hard the marketing pushses,
Other than the flash it’s not clear what the Cappy offers over the old Paper. Currently the Cappy is only available as a pre order but it’ll cost you 9 bucks more even with a pre-order discount than the cheapest cased 18MP Paper shoot from their relevant store.
But what about the market in 2024 ?
days have gone when you had Paper Shoot and cheap crap stuff from China in the Lo-fi Market
Today there is serious opposition. Camp Snap has done phenomenal business moving into this market. It undercuts the Cappy and Paper Shoots in price by almost half. Oddly it’s more conventional styling, basically looking like a Dubblefilm show clone, combined with cheap cost has won over loads of Photogs. It’s also running out of the box with built in battery and a SD card. It has no screen and whilst you can now switch a filter you can only do by flashing the firmware
If you don’t think that’s film enough then there’s the Flashback ONE35. Look I know I roasted this a bit (okay a lot) and it is far from perfect. But some things have been sorted. And for Just shy of 80 quid, you get a camera that looks likes and feels like a disposable film camera. And it takes images that look like they’ve been taken on a (very cheap) disposable. You’re limited to 27 shots a virtual roll until you upload that to get processed on the cloud over a day or 2. This allows you to reload the camera as well and you can pick a different film type on each reload (current 2 colour and 1 B&W film types).
These are to be joined by the Retro Snap. This takes the classic style of the Camp Snap and offers an option to switch filters. It has mighty similar specs otherwise.

Bit like the Cappy then ?
and I ain’t even mentioned budget Chinese numbers

So….
But if the Cappy offer a different take this may be encouraging for the sector as whole and may stimulate innovation. But one worries it’s too much of the same. And we may see 2 companies go into death spiral by cutting each others margins. That will obviously benefit newer different products like the Camp Snap and Flashback. But It will be a shame if lose the innovation the Paper Shoot brought.
Gillian has violated her contract with Paper Shoot by producing a nearly identical camera, which directly breaches their non-competition agreement—an agreement that remains in effect even after her contract with Paper Shoot ended. Motivated by personal gain, she continues to hide her unethical practices by deleting negative comments and blocking individuals on social media. Her actions are not a rebrand, as she claims, but rather intellectual property theft. Despite badmouthing Paper Shoot’s founders and positioning herself as a victim (which she has done on countless occasions such as when nearly her complete staff quit – this is a good read on her linkedin if it is still available). Regardless of her breaches of contract, she was offered a new contract that would have allowed her to continue working with the company, albeit under stricter conditions to further protect their intellectual property. Which turns out was necessary. However, she refused.
Furthermore, she has consistently breached the agreement by selling her products in unauthorized locations via her website, Etsy and Amazon stores etc., siphoning sales from Paper Shoot’s authorized distributors. This continued even after the company explicitly asked her to stop directly showing her level of greed. This would be my biggest issue as to why I would not support any of her businesses under cappy camera or jig jag collective. Why step on others when you add on your linkedin “I’m a young entrepreneur operating a multi-national, multi-million dollar online business from my home in Canada.” Makes me question jus how much of her multi millions is owed to the distributors in the other locations.
Speaking solely about her camera. If you examine the photo gallery on her site, the filter quality is noticeably poor. She cannot call this a rebrand, as she had no involvement in the original invention. What she definitely has, however, is an inflated sense of self-worth and a subpar product.
Thanks Andy. I had to try to be balanced on the post and I had to pull some punches to do that. So far the Cappy in my humble opinion is just a copy of the paper shoot done on the cheap. The circuit board looks much more basic and one of their purported new features of having a built in battery is a backwards step as it limits the lifespan of the camera and makes it a more toxic recycle when the battery dies. The only difference is the flash.
Also her claim of being Doxxed is just wack. Paper Shoot linked appropriately to a government registered and already in the public domain document that contained details. Those documents were key to the point they were making and as I’ve said were publicly searchable and viewable. These would have taken someone who wanted to send abuse 2 more seconds to track down
I appreciate your article, as it sheds light on a troubling situation. This group seems to be building their platform on falsehoods, suppressing any challenges, criticism, or open discussion. They are leveraging their Paper Shoot following to promote their new camera, while deleting and blocking any comments that present the truth. I’ve seen videos where, due to misinformation spread by Gillian, people are led to believe that Paper Shoot no longer exists. Rather than immediately clarifying this, they instead offer to send their new camera to those misinformed individuals. It is only when comments specifically point out that Paper Shoot is still operational that they reluctantly acknowledge its existence, claiming their contract was terminated without cause. Gillian stated, “It still exists! They ship from Taiwan now. We had a contract until 2026, but unexpectedly it was ended early without cause. So we pivoted and are making our own camera with updated features!” This is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts, as their contract was actually terminated due to multiple breaches. Most consumers prefer to support companies with ethical business practices, and the defamatory claims they’ve made against the Paper Shoot founders are entirely false. I hope your article reaches a wide audience and helps bring more clarity to the situation.
Peta Pixel also ran this and they had a very balanced post on thishttps://petapixel.com/2024/10/07/amid-kerfuffle-former-paper-shoot-camera-distributor-launches-competing-toy-camera/