Fujifilm’s New Instax Mini 99 is an Instax digital camera for many who love handbook controls and artistic results. It is not the sharpest Instax I’ve examined—that is still the Mini Evo—however it may be essentially the most analog and essentially the most succesful.
The $200 price ticket is effectively above the entry-level point-and-shoot Instax cameras, however right here you get publicity and shutter management, a swatch of colour results, and even the flexibility to simulate gentle leaks, like those you get with these thrift retailer cameras amassing mud in your shelf.
Handbook Energy
Apart from the colourful and bubbly entry-level cameras, Fujifilm’s Instax design normally tends towards a retro-camera vibe, which holds true for the Mini 99. The 99 is all-black as an alternative of the silver and black discovered within the Mini 90, however in any other case bears greater than a passing resemblance to the older mannequin. Fujifilm hasn’t formally stated the 99 replaces the 90, however they really feel shut sufficient to one another that I would be stunned if the Mini 90 continues for lengthy.
{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson
The lens of the Mini 99 is similar because the Mini 90. It is a 60-mm lens fabricated from plastic. It really works out to roughly the identical subject of view as a 35-mm lens in 35-mm format (or when you choose, someplace between 1x and 2x in your iPhone). The shutter is fastened at f/12.7, which suggests you will be counting on the flash in all however vivid, sunny, outside pictures. That stated, in contrast to fairly just a few different Instax fashions, with the Mini 99 you may flip off the flash for these well-lit pictures.
Maybe essentially the most attention-grabbing a part of the Mini 99, and one thing new for the Instax line, are the handbook focus choices. The Mini 99 doesn’t have true handbook focus the place you flip a dial on the lens to get exact focus. As an alternative there are three zones of focus: shut up (0.3 to 0.6 meters), midrange (0.6 to three meters), and infinity (3 meters to infinity). For these not metric-savvy, that works out to 1 to 2 toes, 2 to 10 toes, and 10 toes to infinity. Whereas that is not as exact as a real handbook focus digital camera, it is extra management than you sometimes get with Instax.
I discover the handbook focus to be a bit inconsistent—or reasonably, the outcomes have been much less dramatic than I anticipated. Remember that the aperture is f/12.7, which suggests the airplane of focus shall be fairly large, even with the main focus zone controls. The Mini 99 is able to bokeh (the identify for out-of-focus areas in a photograph), however solely in very particular conditions like a portrait, and even then you need to use the closest focus, which suggests your topic’s face will largely fill the body anyway. That stated, having the ability to play with focus in any respect is a step up from most Instax cameras, the place focus is fastened, and the 1-foot shut focus distance of the Mini 99 is sweet for macro-style pictures. Not like some Instax cameras, there may be parallax correction within the viewfinder in order that what you see within the body could be very near what you get.
