Fujifilm North America Corporation has introduced the newest addition to its Instax family of analog instant cameras, the Fujifilm Instax Mini 99. The retro-styled camera employs a matte black finish and adds new advanced image features for colour, brightness, and focus modes.
The newly designed controls include a Color Effect Dial with six effects – Faded Green, Warm Tone, Light Blue, Soft Magenta, Sepia, and Light Leak. Driven by LED lights within the camera, the Color Effect feature exposes the chosen colour onto the Instax Mini instant film, creating the desired effect on the printed image.
There’s also a new Brightness Control Dial that offers five distinct levels of brightness: the Light (“L+”) setting indicates the brightest exposure, the “L”, “D”, and “N” settings offer the normal range of brightness, and the Dark (“D-”) setting represents the darkest available brightness level.
You can choose from a variety of shooting modes as well, including Indoor Mode designed for low light situations, Sports Mode, which increases the shutter speed for action shots, Double Exposure Mode, which lets you combine two images into one, and Bulb Mode, which increases the amount of light let in when creating the image, resulting in a brightened effect on the print.
The new Vignette Switch on the lens housing can be used to add an artistic shaded frame around the image subject for a softened effect. Additionally, a self-timer helps with creating group images. The Mini 99’s flash controls include auto mode, fill-in (flash will always fire regardless of lighting), red-eye removal, or the option to turn the flash off, depending on the lighting situation.
The camera’s Landscape, Normal/Portrait, and Macro Focus Modes are easily accessible by adjusting the lens dial. Landscape Mode focuses on subjects positioned at a distance reference of “3.0m and beyond.” Macro Mode is perfect for close-ups and selfies at a distance reference of “0.3m to 0.6m.” Select Standard Mode for everything in between.
To enhance grip, Mini 99 comes with a precision-milled, Base Grip with Tripod Mount that also acts as a grip when attached to the camera (tripod sold separately).
To complement the new camera, Fujifilm has also announces an update to its free, downloadable Instax Up! smartphone app. The app is designed for Instax users to digitally scan, import, organize, and store their photos in one place, regardless of which Instax instant film, instant camera, or instant smartphone printer product you use. Leverage the app to scan Instax photo prints and store them digitally in one place; organize scanned digital photos by category/list views for easy locating; share digitally stored photos and collections via social media or text; and import digitally stored photos from other Instax apps, like the Instax Mini Link app or the Instax Link Wide app, into the Instax Up! app.
The latest addition to the Instax Up! app is an album feature that makes it easy to organize and store digital Instax photos by themes, such as holidays, friends, and favourites. Within the album feature, you can add, tag, share, download and delete images from the digital album. A list/box view can also be created for each album.
“Advances in instant photography technology have allowed us to maintain the look and feel our users love and expect from our Fujifilm Instax cameras, while adding exciting new technology that will permit them to truly reflect their creativity and artistic expression,” says Bing Liem, Division President, Imaging Division, Fujifilm North America Corporation. “This is why Mini 99 is especially exciting to Fujifilm, and we believe for image makers as well.”
The Fujifilm Instax Mini 99 instant camera is expected to be available in Canada in mid-April 2024 for an MSRP of $250.