I continued my exploration of the Fujifilm Instax Square SQ6 camera with a pack of the Monochrome film. The color film didn’t wow me (see some images here), but I’d seen images from the Monochrome online that showed promise.
I’m still learning the camera, too. I almost have the controls down; my remaining bugbear is using close-up mode when regular mode would work better. I’m also getting a feel for how wide the lens is and how much the viewfinder doesn’t line up with the lens.
I instantly (see what I did there?) liked the Monochrome film more than the color film. It’s not perfect, though.
After I scanned these prints, I tweaked the scans in Photoshop until they looked like the actual print. That had the effect of turning the border gray, when it is actually bright white. No matter; it’s the image that counts. Here’s our granddaughter putting a bowl on her head.
The SQ6’s viewfinder infuriates me. When I framed this electric tower, it was horizontally centered and it filled the frame. Why did Fujifilm put the viewfinder so far away from the lens? Could they not have at least positioned it top center on the camera so horizontally centered subjects would be horizontally centered on the print? But notice how well the Monochrome film captured these clouds. Very nice.
My ideal Instax camera would also have a longer lens, in the ballpark of a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera. I get it, Instax photography is about putting your besties in the frame at medium range, and a wide lens lets you capture your whole posse.
The Monochrome film is capable of reasonable midrange tonality. But it always blocks up in the shadows and often blows out in the highlights, sometimes in the same photograph. This photo shows Monochrome’s blocked-up/blown-out tendencies best: the grass is black, the street is white.
The subject of this photo is a dwarf tree full of pink blooms, grass below and sky above. Now, I do shoot with the camera set to Darken outside, which is probably -1 EV. But if I shot at normal exposure, it would probably lead to slightly more shadow detail and a completely blown-out sky.
In scenes where contrast is managed, Instax Square Monochrome film does a reasonable job of capturing detail.
I tried one selfie in this pack. I tried to frame myself enough to the side in the mirror next to the lens so I’d appear in the center of the print, but I didn’t manage it. It’s tricky to frame things accurately with this camera, period. I can live with every other limitation of this camera, but this one could well be a deal breaker.
I’m sure I’ll try at least one more pack of the Monochrome film, and maybe one more of the color film, before I decide whether to keep this camera. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it. I can learn to live with the wide lens, but I am willing to try only so long to figure out the viewfinder for accurate framing. It’s hard for me to justify keeping cameras I don’t at least solidly like.
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