Mint TL70 Instax Camera

Kenzie and I did a short mini photo session this afternoon.  She did some shooting with her Fuji Evo Hybrid Instax camera while I shot a few photos with my Mint TL70 twin lens reflex (TLR) Instax camera.  It was nice to see the side-by-side comparisons.  This blog entry is really only about my Mint TL70 though.

This Mint TL70 camera is closer to being a medium format camera than a typical instant camera.  Most instant cameras have a pinhole for an aperture (or close to a pinhole) but this camera has a pretty nice lens with a manual aperture ranging from f5.6 to f22.  It captures an image right on the film so it is comparable to medium format film.  

This camera has a nice lens and a huge and fairly bright waist-level viewfinder that you look down into from above.  The tonal quality of the Instax prints is really quite nice although that is not really seen accurately in photographs.  I should find a better way to show those prints on my blog because my photos of these prints are not doing them justice.

Because of the large image circle being capture on the Instax film, it is easy to get good background separation and a smooth tonal gradient with this camera.  Of course, this old-style TLR camera is a manual focus camera and it has manual aperture control.  Exposure is semi-automatic which is nice.  In most cases, the camera will tell you if you have set the exposure correctly but you still need to know what you are doing in overly bright and low light conditions or the prints won't look good.  

I've posted this photo before but here is a photo of the camera...

These prints are glossy so they never photograph well.  This photo at the top will have to do for now.  These prints really look much better in person than they do in a photo.  I do enjoy the warmth of the Instax film though.  

I really wish I could shoot more often with this camera.  I didn't do much with photography through the pandemic because we were in the house almost all the time and we avoided all travel at all cost.  I hope to get out and about with various cameras in the coming months assuming my health stabilizes a bit.  I'm still recovering from my last emergency hospital stay and I have a few more hospital visits scheduled in the next couple of months.  After that, however, I really do hope I can get out far more often with each of my cameras through the summer.