INSTAX MINI 99 LETS YOU TAKE CONTROL AND GET CREATIVE
Fujifilm’s most advanced Instax yet gets colour effects and new focus modes
Fujifilm has unveiled its most advanced Instax camera to date, the Instax Mini 99. The new model, which uses Instax Mini film packs, adds a host of creative options to the ‘instant’ point-and shoot experience, including colour effects and vignettes.
The Instax Mini 99 looks a little like a cross between the Instax Mini 40 and Mini 90 Neo Classic, with the same retro rangefinder film camera aesthetic, although in a chunkier Instax form.
On the top of the camera are two manual dials, one of which enables you to apply colour effects including Faded Green, Sepia, and Light Leak to images via LEDs that flash inside the camera as the film is exposed. Other controls enable you to adjust the brightness of images and add a vignette.
New shooting modes include Sports, which uses a faster shutter speed for action shots; Indoor, which balances exposure for indoor lighting; and Double-Exposure. The flash can now be set to auto (always on), fill flash, or red-eye removal flash, or turned off.
As well as the Macro mode that’s featured on previous Instax cameras for subjects between 0.3-0.6m from the camera, the focus dial can be set to Landscape mode for scencs 3.0m away and beyond, and Standard mode for subjects in between 0.6m and 3.0m.
There’s a new self-timer mode for group shots, and the Mini 99 features a 1/4-inch filter thread for mounting the camera to a tripod. There’s also a Base Grip Tripod Mount accessory for additional grip when handheld.
The Instax Mini 99 will be available from April 4, priced at £174.99 / $199.99.
Very few photographic genres offer the same range of lighting, colour and detail that can be found in a landscape. Changing weather, the shifting position of the sun in the sky, and the steady progress of the seasons afford us the opportunity to capture familiar locations in new ways almost every day, which goes some way to explaining why landscape photography is such a popular genre.
The downside of so many photographers shooting landscape images is that it has become almost impossible to capture a truly unique shot of a well-known landmark. Instagram is awash with photos of places such as Durdle Door in Dorset, Yosemite National Park in the USA, Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Canada, and, more recently, the misty skeletal forests of Madeira or the wild shores of the Faroe Islands. It doesn’t take long for content creators to flock to even the remotest of locations in search of ‘the shot’.
The solution is not to try and produce images that could be taken by anybody else, but rather to find new combinations of styles and techniques – and while you can do this in camera to an extent, the editing stage is where you can quickly and easily achieve a distinct ‘look’.
Modern image editing software offers a wide range of professional features to play with, both AI and conventional, and although AI hits the headlines regularly these days, there are plenty of manual filters and colour-grading tools that you can use to realise your vision.
Over the next few pages we’ll take a look at the key steps favoured by two professional landscape photographers, and how they use these to craft a signature look for their images. We’ll then progress onto high-level landscape processing tricks that you can use today to get the maximum drama out of all your scenic shots.