Instax with Kenzie

Kenzie and I played around with her Fuji Evo Hybrid Instax camera today and came away with a few nice prints.  We also learned a little more about her new Instax camera that she received this past Christmas.

I set up one studio light for our little photo session this afternoon.  We started with her hybrid Instax camera.  It is a "hybrid" camera because it has both digital and film capabilities.  It captures photos and saves them to a memory card in the camera.  The photos can be viewed on the rear LCD screen like most other digital cameras.  What makes this camera different is that it has Instax instant film loaded inside it too.  If you want to print a particular photo to the Instax film, then you simply crank the "print" lever which is the same sort of lever used to advance the film on old film cameras.  The image is then developed onto the Instax instant film and the photo is ejected out the side of the camera just like on the old Polaroid cameras.  

I actually still have an old Polaroid camera.  Photos captured on Polaroid film always come out a bit fuzzy (due to the very small aperture), dull, cold (color temperature) and a little greenish while photos captured on Fuji Instax film are noticeably sharper, bright, colorful and warm.  Of course, if you use Instax Monochrome film rather than color Instax film then the prints are not colorful but they do render nice tones in monochrome.  The Polaroid film also seems to have less dynamic range so you often have overly dark backgrounds and blown highlights in the foreground.  

I recently tried my old Polaroid camera again just to make sure I was remembering that camera accurately.  After shooting a whole roll of Polaroid film, I realized that I wasn't remembering it accurately...  it is actually worse film than I remembered it being!  On the other hand, the Fuji Instax film produces really nice prints by comparison.

Kenzie is slowly filling up her first photo album of Instax prints and the images are looking nice!

When Kenzie opened her gift containing her new Evo Instax camera, I had been distracted with other grandchildren opening their gifts so I didn't get a photo of her new camera that day.  I purposely captured a couple of photos today though...

As you can see in the above photos, the camera has a classic look to it.  It also has a bunch of fun built-in digital filters that she can apply to each of the photos to give them unique or even old fashioned looks.  She has a nice classic leather case too.  It came with a few other little accessories too but I cannot remember what they are at the moment.  It is a pretty nice little camera though.  We did some side-by-side comparisons to my Instax twin lens reflex camera and her camera fared fairly well.  My TLR camera produces better images which should be expected but her little Instax camera has its own unique characteristics and advantages.  It was a pretty fun little mini photo session!

We'll be heading out with Kenzie tomorrow to do some shopping and she'll be bringing her camera along so I'm sure she'll be adding more prints to her album tomorrow evening.