Review: Fujifilm Instax Wide 300

If you were born post 1990, there’s a good chance you’ve never needed to load film into a camera; your first camera experience was probably a point and shoot camera or a mobile shooter.

First there was film:

Things were slightly different before you were born; your entire holiday had to captured with one or maybe few film rolls (typically 36 shots) and every picture was clicked judiciously. Quite a contrast from 2015 when you click hundreds of images on a single day on holiday from your mobile device with cloud storage clients like Flickr or Dropbox doing the rest.

The Fujifilm Instax Wide took me straight back to those times when you kept an eagle eye on the image counter and never wasted a single click. Polaroid type cameras were a big deal back then, fancy restaurants used them to capture special occasions and presented you with an endearing memory along with a fat check. This fun cam allows you to do the same thing except the picture quality has improved a fair bit. Make no mistake, this is not a camera that you should judge by its image quality but a device that is packed with a fun quotient. The big question is – what’s your idea of fun?

The package:

The Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 might look unwieldy but sits quite snugly in your hands largely due to its lightweight construction – it’s a little over 600 gms (dimensions: 167.8 x 94.7 x 120.9 mm). Setting it up is a breeze – just add the 4 AA batteries, load the instant film (A pack of ten should cost around Rs 1000 – Rs 1500), strap the cam around your neck and you’re good to go. There’s an optical viewfinder and the handgrip allows decent control over the shooter. There are not a lot of bells and whistles except for a cool ‘lighten-darken control’. This lets you tweak exposure values; there’s also an automatic flash that should come to your aid in dim lighting scenarios. The shutter speed range swings from 1/64 seconds to 1/200 seconds while the retractable lens can focus from 0.9 metres to 3 metres .

The experience:

It takes some adjusting to switch from a large view finder (especially if all you click all your images with a mobile cam) to the tiny view finder on the Instax. We took the device out for a spin on a cloudy morning and the results were decent. The colours tend to be slightly muted but there’s a retro feel to the images reminiscent of one of the cool Instagram filters you might use to dress up your images. The image quality might be average (and below average in lowlight) but the thrill of a printed photograph within seconds is something that even professional cameras can’t match.

Should you indulge?:

Not if you are looking for a serious photography tool. If you are evaluating this device against serious cameras, you are missing the point. However if you are looking at a fun device that you can keep pulling out for special occasions – like your kid’s birthday party or your school reunion or even to capture printed memories on a family holiday that can sit along with your fridge magnets, this is certainly worth the small investment. At a time when there are more selfies clicked than images with a primary shooter, the Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 is a nice throwback to a different time and place; just make sure you don’t run out film or batteries though. And if your sole purpose of clicking pictures is gratification on social media you might need to get used to a different type of instant gratification (the close up lens attachment helps for self portraits) tough as it might be!

What we liked: Instant gratification, cool design, fun quotient 

What we didn’t like: Average image quality, high recurring cost

Price: Rs 9,500