THAILAND: How To Use An Instax Mini 8 Camera

THAILAND: How To Use An Instax Mini 8 Camera

• Thursday 17 July 2014

I'm back from Thailand (cryy) and want to write up so much as I can. I am really one of those people who like to look back on their memories, documented rather than just in my head which is why I love to take photos so much! This little thing takes it one step further and I get an actual paper image, it really was the perfect little souvenir to have at the end of each da y(Huge thanks to Jessops for supplying me with the films!). Now, as much as I love it, it was a little tricky to use and I did take a lot of bad ones in the process but once you get the hang of it, its so much fun!

We took 23 photos and out of that 15 were good! Not great, but not terrible for my first experience with it plus I think if I was actually taking the photos myself they would have been alot better since trying to explain it to Thai people who don't speak English is quite hard haha. So here are a few things we learnt along the way:

Framing

Andrew took both of these and you can tell the difference in his framing. The one on the left was the taken on the first night, the first time he used the camera and its actually great for a first ever shot but the one of the right was taken nearer to the end of the holiday and he really got the hang of it there. Once you get used to the idea that what you see in the viewfinder is not what that photo will look like its alot easier. The perfect framing in the viewfinder always cuts off the bottom so I suggest that you find the frame in your viewfinder, then point it down just a little before shooting!

Exposure

Unlike my SLR, using the right setting on this camera is actually important, I'm so used to using it on Auto (naughty photography student) that I just though the same with this but it really is essential that you change the setting to fit your surroundings each time! It's very easy, and is just a matter of twisting the dial to inside mode, sunny, cloudy or whatever but it makes a huge difference on whether your photos are over or under exposed! Over exposed and everything is white, this actually only happened twice and under exposed and everything is black, this happened alot more often. I found it would happen when quite alot if you the lighting and settings were fine but you were just too far away from the subject. I also found it would happen, if you set it to sunny and stand in the shade, it doesn't work, the sunny setting works best when its sunny and your actually standing in the sun too, was that obvious?!

Distance

I'm still not too sure on this one, I found that most of the time, the photos looked better when you were closer to the camera, the photo below with the beach in the background was the only one with a bit of distance that came out well - it was taken by a woman who spoke English so that may have had something to do with it too.  

Here are a few of my faves 

Camera - FujiFilm*

Films - Jessops*

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