I adore taking photographs. I have thousands and thousands stored on external hard drives and many well stocked photo albums. I’ll admit, I do find printing quite a tedious task, waiting for them to arrive or be collected is a real annoyance for someone has impatient as me.
That’s where Fujifilm’s Instax Mini 8 Instant Camera comes in. A small, lightweight camera that allows you to take and instantly print small but perfectly formed pictures.
The camera is bigger than I expected but is extremely light weight. It’s quit chunky, which means clumsy people like myself are less likely to drop it. It’s also an ideal size for younger people to use. I suspect a child from around 8 years would thoroughly appreciate how fun the camera is.
The camera doesn’t have an on or off switch, to take picture’s you need to press the button at the left side of the lens, this extends the lens and means the camera is ready to be used. Turning it off is easy too, simply lightly push the lens back in and the camera is turned off.
The camera has a 60mm wide angle lens with a fixed focus range of .6 meters to infinity, the focus isn’t as good as as a SLR camera, but that’s to be expected. Not surprisingly, once you’ve pressed to take your picture, there’s no going back. I love the uniqueness of instant camera’s the crazy shots you may end up with and the anticipation of it waiting to print.
The large door at the rear of the camera is the entry point of the film. The credit card size package is easily inserted and works almost instantly. Prior to taking your first picture the front cover from the film will be ejected, don’t be confused by this when you’re taking pictures!
At the ride side of the door the picture countdown is easily readable. It counts down from 10, which is the maximum amount of prints your film holds.
The camera is extremely easy to use point and shoot with very basic functions. The camera has auto focus and the flash will fire during each use, there’s no need to remember to turn it on.
The camera is automatic but there are options on the dial surrounding the lens, they allow you to adjust your image. When you turn on the camera it will automatically detect the light settings and suggest a setting for your picture, you can choose this, or override it to produce lighter or darker images.
The prints are ejected from the top of the camera very quickly after each picture is taken. Once it’s out, remove it and lay it down safely to develop, contrary to belief, you really shouldn’t ‘shake it like a Polaroid picture!’.
I really quite like the quality of the pictures the camera takes. It’s ideal for family selfies like ours and photos of the little man to store in his Project Life album. I love how simple and easy to use the camera
The camera would be ideal to leave on each table at a wedding to help create lovely keepsakes, for younger teens to use to decorate their bedrooms for for a crafty like myself to use in scrapbooking or Project Life.
- Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
- Lens Aperture: f/12.7
- Focal Length: 60 mm
- Min Focus Range: 23.6 in
- Shooting Range: 2 ft – 9 ft
- Shutter Control: electronic
- Shooting Modes: full auto
- Film Advance: automatic
- Camera Flash: built-in flash
- Flash Modes: auto mode
- Batteries: 2 AA
- Features: auto power off
- Viewfinder: real-image
- Magnification: 0.37x
I have been looking at getting my daughter something like this for her birthday as she is selfie crazy ( she's almost 13) x