♥ Fujifilm Instax Mini Review ♥

TOPSHOP JUMPER // HANDMADE SKIRT // TOPSHOP HEADBAND // FUJIFILM INSTAX MINI

A few of you noticed this cute little camera in the background on my last few posts, so I thought I'd do a quick review on it. I bought it a month or so ago, just for fun. I've wanted an instant camera for literally years (who else wanted one of those polaroid mini sticker cameras when they were a kid?), but never bought one, because I have a dslr & a compact camera & I didn't really *need* an instant one, so it was hard to justify to myself. I ended up losing (or winning, depending on your viewpoint) that battle with myself & ended up buying one anyway!

I chose the pink version, obviously. It also comes in blue, yellow, white, black & I think brown. I've also seen a Hello Kitty one whilst browsing Google images, not sure if that was a limited edition, or something. I paid £63.75 for mine on Amazon, & £11.26 for 2 packets of film. I don't think the price of the actual camera is too bad,  it's just the film that is rather expensive! For each packet of film, you get 10 shots, so each photo ended up costing around 60p. You can also buy film with patterned borders, like Rilakkuma, Disney Princess, dots, Cath Kidston prints, etc, which was really tempting for the cuteness factor, but was double the price of the normal film, so I didn't bother!

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As you can see, I've decorated my camera with lots of bunny & food stickers (these were sent to me a few years ago by the lovely Kim of Oborocharms), as if it wasn't cute enough just being pink, haha. What can I say, I just like cute stuff!

The camera is pretty easy to use, just push the button to pop the lens out & it automatically turns on. Loading the film is a breeze, clicking simply into place. The photos themselves are about business card size. It was weird at first to have a camera with only a viewfinder, haha, but as my dslr requires looking through the viewfinder to take pictures too, I got used to it quickly.

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I've taken 11 photos with it so far, 2 of which came out horribly, because I put it on the wrong light settings, eek! It has  5 light settings, indoors, cloudy, daylight, bright & I think an auto one. I had it on bright when I was indoors, so they came out really dark, oops! The picture quality itself is okay, nothing special, but it's the fun factor that I really love, & the fact you can have the photos in your hand instantly.

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I've found it tricky to focus close-up though, as the camera has no focusing feature, you just click & hope for the best. Photos from more of a distance seem to come out better, so I shall try not to get too close to the subject in future. The photo size is described as credit/business card size, which is pretty accurate. These are a great size for keeping in your wallet (if you do that!), I've got all mine stored in my dressing table drawer at the minute, trying to think of some way to store or display them nicely.

Verdict: fun inexpensive camera (excluding the film-could get really expensive over time!), good for taking snapshots & having as an extra camera. Wouldn't advice one of these as your only camera though, for obvious reasons. What do you think, have you got an instant camera, or have you ever wanted one?

 

 ♥ Georgina