With Polaroid out of the picture, Fujifilm has been making moves in recent years to own instant photography — what’s left of it anyway — with its Instax line of cameras, printers, and film. Today, it makes a play at a niche of the instant market with a larger format camera that pops out wide photos.
The Instax Wide 300 takes 86mm x 108mm film that’s double the size of the film in last year’s Instax Mini 90. The actual image area is 62mm x 99mm. For reference, the Polaroid 600 film the Impossible Project so diligently recreated measures 88mm x 107mm with a 79mm x 79mm image. So while the Wide 300 film will be big like you remember, it’s not that familiar square you stuck on your fridge. Instead, it’s a wider shot, which in fairness might be better suited to our HD format screens.
Like the Mini 90, the Wide 300 is basically a modern take on a classic. Larger format instant photography has been a staple amongst professionals as diverse as dentists and designers, who need physical shots on the fly. But beyond the pros Fujifilm hints at, the camera could do well amongst the people racing back to lo-fi analogue photography in recent years as well. We’ll see if the wide format takes.
At $US130, the Instax Wide 300 isn’t too expensive, but it might be a tad more than an the weekend warrior wants to drop on a novelty, especially when a twin pack of 20 exposures costs $US32. Out Q2 2015.