r/instax

Using instax mini 12

Ok so the light and shadows? Great. Detail? Mostly good. Filters? Some good some so so.
But alas the battery feels like it’s going to be atrocious. After about 55 or 60 pics mine dropped to only 1 bar of battery life. This is considering a 3 hour charge time plugged into a charger.
Now, I did do a full setup and left the live preview on a lot of that time. And I messed around with menus, connecting and so on. So all of that are through batteries I’m sure. But it still feels like the battery life may be disastrously bad.

Edit: there may be a saving grace. With only 1 bar of battery left I plugged it into my phone, and after 5 minutes of getting photos off of it and browsing through the pics while it was still charging off my phone the battery had recharged to a second bar. So.. maybe not all is lost

Plug your Pal 2 into your phone. When you get this message hit back and on iOS it’ll show the photos in the import menu like for any external memory. Choose import all and then if you want, delete the originals and the shot counter goes back to 0. They should be on your phone as jpegs and at the full 10mp resolution.
And enjoy your day while also being able to ignore the app. It’s a lot faster this way too.
I haven’t checked on android of course.

Hi Pals,

I went out today to share some more photos and quirks of the Instax Pal2.

I wanted to retest the 100 image limit (even with a large SDCard) and try different ways to hold the camera and shoot. The thing is a doozy but fun. Because I was trying to get to 100 shots I was moving and shooting fast.

It's all in the thumb

It's so odd to shoot with your thumb on the shutter. Even when shooting vertical, it's a thumb press. Cool, fun and weird. 
Shooting with the thumb also has another benefit that it's easy to cup your off-hand over the screen in bright light. 

Everything is Dutch angle

Forget the horizon line. In fact, let go of your grip on composition altogether. This sucker is a random shooter. I found that the 'straightest' shots were when I braced the camera up against a surface.

Hand held but not holding your hand

The camera loves to be shot, but it encourages you to hold it at the hip and shoot 'ala-Rolleiflex-style'. I had trouble raising the camera high, then I realised that you can shoot through the app. That's another quirky experience. There is lag all over the place, so embrace the randomness, but at least you can hold the camera at whatever height and angle you want and still sort of see what you'll get.

Stealth and good for your health

The tiny size is a huge plus in a sort of 'creeper-cam' style. Shooting by looking down to the top screen or even through the App and all are super subtle. I'm a shy person and not really comfortable in crowds. The only thing that sticks out with this camera is that you'll appear to others like you are chimping all the time, even though the screen is too small to chimp with. It's an experience. Tiny means it's with you. Easy to carry and encourages you to be out and about.

Vertical shooting will drive you up the wall

Shooting vertically is even more weird. At first I thought that I could just change the frame to Mini and I'd get a vertical image. Nope, if you export without the fame it's just a regular format. 

If you tilt the camera be prepared to dance. Orientating the screen is an odd experience when looking at the top screen (on its side). That's the best way to gather as many vertical pixels as you can, but it's a conundrum for your brain to figure out to tilt away or closer to you to straighten the image, and rotate to frame up or down. Some people might call that fun, and I would watch those people closely.

To Zen and back again

Take your time when shooting because this camera will take your time from you. Slow filter select, slow shutter press, slow focus and a slow auto-chimp-preview before you can shoot again. Subjects will walk away from you. For the InstaxPal2 that's just called changing the subject. Fishing for a shot is like holding the worm in your hand and throwing your rod in the water hoping to strike down a holy mackerel. I watched a crippled old lady in a wheelchair roll away from me before my Pal took a shot of her dust cloud. That's what I call creative censorship at it's best.

100 image limit, with a quirk

I stuck in an 125GB ExtremePlus SDCard because you'd think you'd get a fair few shots on that. Except it caps at around 100 images no matter what card is in there. But, then it plays a game with you... If you transfer the images through the Instax app it resets your counter and you are free again to squeeze off another 100 images! I'm sure that this will be patched, but it's just another lovely little quirk to this thing.

Got to love the sucker

I love this camera, however, it's a toy, and as such it's no better than my phone or any other Fuji camera. It's better than a Charmera, and there you go. 

Have fun and happy shooting with whatever you've got.

(I tried to include the 10MP images so you can see what it's capable of. Images are unedited. I uploaded the last two images at different megapixels, first is 10MP, then the second 1MP, so you can see the difference between the quality and strange crop that happens when you shoot at or transfer to 1MP)

Usually when I go on a road trip I look for filming locations of some of my favorite movies! Here are 3 pictures I took at 3 different locations 🤓!

1. Stu Machers house from Scream!

2. East High from High School Musical!

3. Something that stands on the land where The Sandlot was filmed!

Hope to see more images and stuff from you guys too! I prefer the pal 2 over my film camera and the Xhalf - the size, price, features and vibes are unmatched for what I want tbh. Would add GIF but can’t here :(

Absolutely love this colour! Can’t wait to start taking pictures and building up a collection of little memories. 🥹🩵

Anyone else got the Mini 13? How are you finding it?