It has been a while since my last post. I have been stuffed with work the past year and haven't been blogging as much as I liked.
I recently got back into photography, particularly instant photography with Fujifilm's Instax Mini format. In this post, I want to share with you 5 tips and tricks that I have picked up along the way that had enhanced my experience of using the instant film, hopefully it will be useful to you as well.
1: Cost of Instax Film
First, the cost of film is expensive. When I first got my Instax Mini 7s, I think I shot about 6 packs of film before I decided that it was too expensive to continue shooting with this camera.
I really liked using the 7s. It is a fun camera but my wallet didn’t agree with it. In Singapore, it costs SG$13.90 for a pack of 10 photos at Harvey Norman and its quite an indulgence, man. Thankfully, globalisation happened and now it is feasible to buy Instax film from all around the world.
The prices on Taobao and Amazon are pretty acceptable if you buy in bulk of about 20 pieces and above. At the time of my purchase in 2018, it worked out to about SG$7.50 to SG$8 for a pack of film. This is almost half the local price!
If are thinking of experimenting with your photos and don't mind using expired film, you can head over to Carousell try to get some. And of course, don't over pay for these. I paid SG$4.90 for a pack of film that was expired 7 months ago. So far, I haven't found any noticeable difference between expired film and fresh film.
Expired films with fanciful borders on the cheap!
2: Keep your Instax Photos Scratch Free On The Go
The next problem stems from its strength as an instant film. So, you just took a picture, its in your hands, then where do you keep it? These Instax films are fairly easy to scratch and its the only picture you have. How then? Buy Instax albums and bring along? That works too, but Instax albums tend to be fanciful and huge.
Inconspicuous name card holder
Not to mention, anything that gets slapped with the Instax trademark instantly (heh heh) increases in price. Luckily for us, Instax Mini film is exactly the same size as a name card. And no one ever buys name card folders so they tend to be very cheap. I got myself a small one that holds 40 pieces that I keep in my pocket to keep my precious pictures scratch free.
Shh... it is actually my Instax album
3: Sharing your Pictures
Third, people say that sharing is caring but Instax film not cheap. Its really precious! If u have 10 friends you want to share a photo with, it is really not feasible to take the same picture 10 times to have 10 copies. Normally, I would take the picture home, scan it and share on social media. But this takes away a bit of the magic of instant photography especially when you are overseas and u really want to give a picture to the kid from an indigenous tribe 1000s of miles from civilisation.
Photo scan via Google's Photoscan (the quality in this blog is not representative of the actual quality of the scan because it is heavily compressed here)
For this issue, I should say that there is an app for that. Introducing google’s Photoscan. Its a clever app that combines several photos to remove the glare from glossy pictures. You first take a full shot of the picture and then position the centre of the camera to the 4 circles of the picture. The app will then sort out the glare and the end result is as good as a proper scan. The quality of the picture is clearer and more vibrant when this is done under bright light. Digitize your pictures before you give the original away!
Google's little known app - Photoscan
4: Exposing Instax Film Correctly
Forth, after trying Instax film for a while, I find that the film is surprisingly unforgiving. Its easy to end up with pictures that are too dark or too bright. When this happens, the Instax film loses a detail when its over or under exposed.
The only 4 settings available on the camera
So, it is really important to make sure that the scene that you are capturing does not have too much variation in brightness. If you can't help taking pictures under such conditions, you need to match the aperture to the brightness of your subject instead of the general brightness of the scene. This way, your subject be properly exposed. This is way harder than it sounds and takes a lot of practice to guess the correct setting to use.
Top view of my Instax Mini 7s with the aperture adjustment knob on the right
Also, if you are taking pictures of people, try to position them side by side instead of front and back. This is to make sure that the camera’s flash lights up everybody's faces evenly. Otherwise, the people nearer to the camera will be too bright, the middle will be ok but the furthest faces will be too dark.
5: Adjust your Flash Output
My fifth tip is regarding taking close ups. My Instax 7s camera has a minimum focus distance of 0.6m. But the flash is far too bright that distance when using the indoor setting. Owners of the Instax 7s would know that there is no way to control the power of the flash nor switch it off.
A little piece of plastic over the flash to soften the flash
One way to 'adjust' the output of the flash is to tape a small piece of white paper or translucent plastic onto the flash to diffuse the light. I taped only the top part of the plastic sheet so that I can flip it away from the flash whenever I need full power and I do not have to remove the plastic sheet completely. You might have to experiment with different thickness of plastic to get the desired effect.
Full power mode!
It is also possible to reduce the effective range of the flash by choosing a smaller aperture setting but this would mean that the background will become very dark. I do this sometimes to isolate my subjects so that they stand out in the picture.
Final Thoughts
That's all the tips I have gathered so far. I think the Instax film is a challenging film to work with but if you do get it right, this film rewards you with beautiful colours and I hope you will come to enjoy instant photography as I have.
Let me know what you think about instant photography and if you have some Instax related tips and tricks up your sleeves, do share them in the comments below. Thank you for reading!
