I brought one of my favorite instant cameras on vacation my Instax 210 made by Fuji. You can still buy the Instax today (check my Amazon recommendations) and Fuji continues to make film readily available. I can find the film on eBay (its also on amazon as well) for about $1 per photo, (down to .50-.75 for the mini size that fits in both the Mio or the Instax mini). The Instax also comes with a detachable macro lens that is great for portraits and sneaking up on cool bugs and butterflies. I also used the Mio (a camera made by Polaroid in the 80s) it still works very well with Instax Mini Film (see photo right). The colors are always rich and bright. One of my favorite things to do with these cameras is to take a photo with the instax photo blending in, we call it ‘photo within a photo‘ or if you take a photo of an Instax with your mobile phone we call it #instaxagram on instagram. How about a short How To slash tutorial on how to achieve that?
We stopped at Baldwin Park after a day on the road visiting the south side of the island at the recommendation of Maui family photographer, Kellie Hatcher. She told me this would be a great place to spot wind surfers. It was gusting that day! I had to brace myself against palm trees to steady my camera for some of the shots. I ended up talking to the lifeguard who was in the tower below. He was curious about the Instax, he saw he film pop out and said, ooooh I want one! I should him my stash of instant cameras in my bag, I think he laughed. I’m kinda a bag lady when it comes to cameras. The photo below is my favorite Instax from the batch titled tower 7. I can’t wait to get this scanned for a canvas print, it is even MORE vibrant in real life. I think I might get this one up on my ETSY site this fall.
There is a nice new feature available now called carousel on WordPress that allows you to view the individual photos below in a slide show format. Click on the first photo below and the page will transform into a slide show with full sized images. Enjoy.
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- koi fish
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- sandcastles
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- Boo on a plane
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- parked
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- window seat
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- goggles
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- sunset
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- almost time
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- honua kai
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- resort
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- SUP boarder
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- Luau
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- surboards
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- baldwin beach
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- tower 7
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- whalers village
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- duke’s
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- view of molokai
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- dunes
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- hibiscus flower
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- last lunch
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- to the beach
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- digging
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- floaties
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- poolside
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- rainbow
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- kaanapalli beach
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- palm
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- Kapalua Airport
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- golden hour
I love every one of these! I think I need an Instax!
I second that Shari 😀
Hi! For all your pictures taken outside during the day & dusk ones, can you tell me what settings you had it on? For ones such as the rainbow, airport and view of Molokai? I just got an instax 210 today and want to make sure they all come out as great as yours did. Thanks!
I could not tell you what the settings were, I don’t usually change a thing, sometimes if I am shooting into a bright sky I will darken but that’s pretty rare – I think the success of the photos in Hawaii are due to the clarity and colors there and holding very still for sharpness is KEY in low light (dusk) photos).
Also, what do you use to take pictures of people inside a house at night?
Its all in the lens. I use a very fast lens, meaning the aperture can go down all the way to 1.2 which allows for my camera to take a pretty decent picture even in candle light without any flash whatsoever. Of course you can always bump up the ISO to help out there if your lens doesn’t get any lower (bigger) than let’s say 4.0 – Here’s a better explanation and hey feature the 50MM which is what I use to shoot indoors. http://digital-photography-school.com/what-is-a-fast-lens
Hello, I am looking into purchasing and INSTAX210 camera.
I was wondering, for the photos in this post, did you shoot with the flash on?
There is no way to turn off the flash in these cameras – if it senses that the ambient light is inadequate the flash will fire – sometimes I hold my fingers over the flash, which probably is not good for the camera. you can place a peice of dark tape over as well.