- Hi it's Parris, from Epic Review Guys.
Now, it's a request that many of viewers,
one in particular.
We are finally trying out the latest
photographic technology, from the 1970s!
It's instant photos.
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When is the last time you bought film for a camera?
Have you ever bought film for a camera?
Almost everyone now has gone digital.
Well, there's movement moving backwards
because people like the idea of instant photos.
Which is, you have a camera to take a picture
of someone and a few seconds, few minutes later
we'll see, you actually have a photograph
you can give to them, or that you can stick
in your scrapbook.
It's something real you can touch,
something real you can have,
and that's making a comeback.
This seems to be the most popular model
of instant camera right now, it's the Fuji Film
Instax mini 8, and it normally goes for $120,
usually I se it online for around 75.
I got it Michael's for $70 even, on sale.
I'll put a link to this camera down below this video.
This will only use the instant photo film
that I just showed you, which goes for about
80 cents a picture.
So, I spent $110 today, to get this instant
camera, and two packs of film,
which will give me 40 photos in total.
For free, with my phone, there is a
high quality digital camera, not only one,
but two of them, that will take pictures
in all kinds of lighting conditions.
It has a flash.
It auto-compensates for all different things that it sees.
It can even find a face and focus on that.
With all of that residing in my phone anyway,
why would I go out and spend money
on this old analog solution?
Well, that's just the thing.
There's a movement now, to go back to analog
in photography.
In audio, people going out and buying LPs and record players
when right here, I have access to 34 million songs
on the Google Play Service.
It's got the built-in speaker.
I can download the songs for offline listenings
and playlists to friends, all of that stuff.
So why are people going out and spending
money on record players, on needles,
on actual records?
People these days seem to miss things they can touch
and hold, and miss things.
Everything is going digital, so all of your photographs
are just digital representation.
Your music is just stored digitally.
Your books are on your Kindle,
just in digital form.
People wanna have something they can hold in their hand.
For me, growing up in the 70s and 80s,
where there wasn't a lot that was digital,
everything was still analog.
And yeah, my dad had a polaroid camera
and took pictures of us and did this for a while
until the image appeared.
I remember all that.
I was so excited when everything went digital,
because now I don't have to have records that
wear out with play, and cassette tapes.
I don't have to have photographs that
are going to yellow with age and have the
emulsion come off and be ruined.
It'll stay in perfect, pristine, digital format forever.
And I don't need to have walls of my house
taken up with bookshelves.
It'll all fit 3,000 books in one little Kindle device.
So I grew up analog, and I couldn't wait
for everything to go digital, I really embraced
all the new technology.
And I found that this sort of this doesn't
tend to appeal to people my age,
people who grew up analog, it's younger folks.
People who grew up digital, and never got to
experience this, and they really think they're
missing something, and maybe they are.
So anyway, that's enough of the philosophical
side of all this.
Let me open the camera.
Open up this film of two 10 packs of pictures.
I'm used to taking the film and having to make sure
it goes through the roller, and engaged on the sprockets.
Then you close the back and you do three shutter releases,
and then you're ready to go.
I think this is a lot different.
The Instax Mini 8 I think is the most popular
of these insta-cameras.
It's made by Fuji Film.
There are other companies making these.
And Fuji Film makes the film for this.
I think there's another company that makes that as well,
that save the polaroid technology
from disappearing completely.
Here is the camera.
My first two observations about it are,
it feels very plasticy for me.
Cameras were, had a lot of metal components in them,
and it feels kind of heavy.
I mean, I think it's heavier than my phone,
which can do all those great digital photos.
But, in any case, the lenses here
that will take the picture.
You can turn the dial, and there are settings here
for the lighting conditions.
Are you outdoors on a sunny day?
Are you inside at a party?
And the button here, is how you open up
the lense cover.
It pops it out.
You can see that popped out some,
and opens it up so it's ready to take a picture.
It does have a flash.
Not sure about this, I'll still have to
read the instructions.
This is the shutter release.
Here on the back, this is where the film pack goes.
I guess that's what we'll call it,
because it's not a roll of film.
It's in there, you can see the back of the lense,
so this is good ole style, 150 year ago
they were using this camera technology.
You have the lense in the front,
a dark compartment.
You put the film up, flat against it.
You open the lense for a brief amount of time,
and you expose the film, or the negative,
and you get you picture.
Viewfinder's up here, that you look through.
It's not through the lense, so you don't see
exactly what the camera sees, because you're
looking a little off center of it.
And I do like old touch.
It's the counter, the film counter,
showing how many exposures you have left.
And it's very analog.
There's a place to put the strap they've included.
And this is where your picture pops out.
I don't know if you still take them and shake them,
in order for them to develop,
but we'll find out shortly.
The quick start guide is all in graphics,
looks pretty easy to understand.
No film comes with the camera,
but they do include the batteries that you need.
I've attached the strap to the camera,
put the batteries that you need.
It's ready to go, now we're ready for the film.
Now this has two 10 packs in it.
Normally goes for around $20,
I think I got it for around $14.
So it's, I've heard that you plan to spend
about 80 cents for each picture,
but that does include developing,
which happens right in the thing itself.
And holding this, I mean, this cover
just so reminds me of Fuji Film,
and of course there was the gold of Kodak.
But I thought, I'm supposed to check a couple things,
and so, looking around I found out,
this iso 800 film, which makes it pretty fast film.
I'm not expecting to get a whole lot of detail,
and I'm not sure that it comes in any other speeds,
and then I thought, "That's right, with film
"you've got the expiration date."
Just like with food.
So I look around and found this is good till 20/17.
Opening the box, hope I don't have to
keep the unused ones in the refrigerator.
This is what it looks like, I remember from roll film,
you can put it in the camera in a room
with the light on, but you don't want to do it
in direct sunlight.
You basically don't want any light to get inside of this.
Or it can expose and ruin the film.
And here is a pack of 10 pieces
of self-developing film in here.
I think they're telling me don't touch there,
don't touch there, and on the back,
don't touch anywhere.
So just basically, hold it by the edges
and then you have it put into the camera.
Following the graphics in the instructions
I'm gonna try to put the film in here.
This is open.
I see a little yellow dot up here
and I see a little yellow mark here,
and I'm thinking that's to tell me,
that's to put it in that way.
That would make sense that the film
would expose that way.
And this looks like there's an opening,
so I'm thinking so i'm thinking that's matches
with where the picture will come out.
I believe it's loaded correctly.
It's like loading it through the spool,
you always cross your fingers that it actually took.
And close this, it's gonna snap.
Alright.
Now it says "S" here on the counter,
and I believe I remember reading
that there's a cover piece that comes out first
that isn't an actual picture.
I think, if you take one, and then it gives you that
cover piece, and then this should go to one,
and then you start taking your pictures,
and it will count up to ten.
Looking through this again, I think maybe
I have it exactly wrong.
I think it goes to 10 and counts down to zero
and then you know you've used up all the pictures, I think.
I'm going to turn it on by popping the lense
out here with a little button.
Let's see what happens.
Oh, we've got a red light here.
I think the flash capacitor is charging.
I'm still seeing an "S."
The red light is flashing slowly.
And then this, I read.
I thought you had to make your best guess
as to what lighting conditions to set it for,
but no, you're supposed to set it according to
where the lamp lights up.
So, this must be, in here, this must be
a light sensor, and it has some idea
of how much light there is.
A red light stops flashing, so the flash is now
charged and ready to go.
Let me take a picture of the pictures we have
on our Christmas wall.
Okay, we'll include the stocking.
Good color to compare it with.
Here we go.
(camera flash)
Flash fired, I saw that.
Okay, the thing came out.
The thing that says, "Don't put your thumb here" came out.
Ah, it changed to "10" from "S."
I'm thinking there's not going to be
a picture appearing on this.
There's a Polaroid smell.
If you remember Polaroids, there's a smell
with that mix of chemicals.
Smell it on this one.
I guess I take it the rest of the way out.
It's black and it has the "Don't put your thumb here."
Still set, orange light says I'm on the right setting.
Okay.
Here we go.
Here's the real one.
Kay, it's black on one side, white on the other side.
I'm assuming the white one will develop.
Doesn't smell Polaroid to me.
Okay, do I leave it here till it's developed?
Or do I take it and shake it?
They don't tell me for sure.
Looks like they say after you've taken the picture
to remove it from the thing,
to turn the camera off by pushing the lense back in.
Okay.
So now our focus is on,
ooh, it's coming.
The pictures coming.
Hey, it's still exciting.
It develops before your eyes.
Polaroids, I remember, were expensive too.
My father had a Polaroid and took pictures of us
on vacations, but he didn't take a lot a lot of pictures,
unless he had his 35mm camera.
Cause I guess, Polaroids were very expensive.
I mean, these instant develop pictures
were expensive even then too.
Developing nicely, we're getting some good color.
Don't know how long you have to give it
to completely develop.
It's been a minute and a half, two minutes, I think.
Here is a picture I took with my phone right afterwards,
and it didn't use the flash, but it's fairly good
at low light, the camera in this Nexus 6P phone.
So you can see, it's nice an even, good color.
The picture, the Instax picture,
is a little bit washed out here.
There happens to be a couple of pieces
of white paper here, and then a little too dark
over here, but that's because the flash fired.
I've stepped up closer to the video camera here,
so you have a better chance to see the detail
in the Instax photo.
I put my glasses on to get a better look
at the Instax photo, which is, another thing
that tells me this is a technology for younger people.
Older people who have reading glasses on
aren't going to appreciate these pictures as much,
because when I looked at it,
at first, it really looked like there wasn't much detail.
Because my eyes couldn't see that in it.
But putting the glasses on, I actually like
how it's picked up the texture of the boot.
And I don't see it as much in my phone photo of it.
So there's something to be said for taking
an actual picture photographs.
It does pick up some things that miss in digital.
You might say, "Well you can't judge a camera
"by one picture.
"You need to go out and take pictures at a party, outdoors."
Well it so happens, I'm going to a party tonight,
and I will be outdoors tomorrow.
So I'm going to do a more thorough
test of taking pictures under different conditions
with this at the party tonight,
and outdoors tomorrow.
So I'll give it a full run, collect all the pictures.
Well, at the party, I don't know I'll get to keep them all.
The people may want to have them themselves.
That is supposed to be a big part of the fun of this,
as you can take the picture with people with their friends,
and give them that picture, but I'll try to
take a picture of the pictures before I give them away.
So I'll be able to show that to you in a followup video
that will cover all the different pictures that I've taken.
The next 39 anyway.
I'm hoping this is gonna be enough film.
That's the thing, is knowing how much you're going to need.
You go to a party and everybody thinks this is so cool,
and wants you to take a picture of them with their friends,
could go pretty fast.
That followup video where I show those pictures
will probably be on the Rainy Day Dreamers channel
that I'm also on, because the other people at the party
will be YouTubers, who have channels similar
to Rainy Day Dreamers, with kids, and family
and toy reviews and that sort of thing.
I'll make sure to put a link though,
somewhere up in the corner and
in the description down below this video.
So if you watch this and wanna see
how a whole bunch of pictures turned out,
make sure to watch that video too.
70 bucks for the camera right now,
and I think I did a reasonably good job
of getting 14 dollars for 20 pictures.
So, if you're interested in these and
wanna find out more about them online,
I'll have links to those also down below this video.
I'll be back soon, with more of technology
and gadget reviews.
Old technology, new technology.
You can keep checking back for those videos,
or you can click that subscribe button down below.
You'll get notified when our videos go up.
See you on the next review.
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