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Fujifilm's New Instax Mini 99 is an Instax camera for those who love manual controls and creative effects. It's not the sharpest Instax I've tested—that remains the Mini Evo—but it might be the most analog and the most capable.
The $200 price tag is well above the entry-level point-and-shoot Instax cameras, but here you get exposure and shutter control, a swatch of color effects, and even the ability to simulate light leaks, like the ones you get with those thrift store cameras collecting dust on your shelf.
Manual Power
Except for the colorful and bubbly entry-level cameras, Fujifilm's Instax design usually tends toward a retro-camera vibe, which holds true for the Mini 99. The 99 is all-black instead of the silver and black found in the Mini 90, but otherwise bears more than a passing resemblance to the older model. Fujifilm hasn't officially said the 99 replaces the 90, but they feel close enough to each other that I'd be surprised if the Mini 90 continues for long.
The lens of the Mini 99 is the same as the Mini 90. It's a 60-mm lens made of plastic. It works out to roughly the same field of view as a 35-mm lens in 35-mm format (or if you prefer, somewhere between 1x and 2x on your iPhone). The shutter is fixed at f/12.7, which means you'll be relying on the flash in all but bright, sunny, outdoor shots. That said, unlike quite a few other Instax models, with the Mini 99 you can turn off the flash for those well-lit shots.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the Mini 99, and something new for the Instax line, are the manual focus options. The Mini 99 does not have true manual focus where you turn a dial on the lens to get precise focus. Instead there are three zones of focus: close up (0.3 to 0.6 meters), midrange (0.6 to 3 meters), and infinity (3 meters to infinity). For those not metric-savvy, that works out to 1 to 2 feet, 2 to 10 feet, and 10 feet to infinity. While that's not as precise as a true manual focus camera, it's more control than you typically get with Instax.
I find the manual focus to be a little inconsistent—or rather, the results were less dramatic than I expected. Keep in mind that the aperture is f/12.7, which means the plane of focus will be pretty wide, even with the focus zone controls. The Mini 99 is capable of bokeh (the name for out-of-focus regions in a photo), but only in very specific situations like a portrait, and even then you have to use the closest focus, which means your subject's face will mostly fill the frame anyway. That said, being able to play with focus at all is a step up from most Instax cameras, where focus is fixed, and the 1-foot close focus distance of the Mini 99 is nice for macro-style shots. Unlike some Instax cameras, there is parallax correction in the viewfinder so that what you see in the frame is very close to what you get.
The Mini 99's design makes use of two dials. One acts like an exposure compensation dial, allowing you to adjust exposure value (EV) two stops brighter and two darker. I found the L (Lighten) and L+ useful when shooting against snow, which has a tendency to overwhelm small sensors like this one. It's also good for strongly backlit scenes, though those are still not Instax's strong suit. The D (Darken) and D- settings proved less useful as they tended to make images overly dark. I could see them being more useful with black-and-white film though, adding a bit of drama.
The second dial allows you to add a series of color effects to your shots. Options include Faded Green (FG), Warm Tone (WT), Light Blue (LB), Soft Magenta (SM), Sepia (SP), and Light Leak (LL). Behind the scenes, Fujifilm is using LEDs to tone your images and, in the case of Light Leak, simulate a light leak on the film. The results are fun; I especially like the Warm Tone, though once I was done testing, I shot most of my images in Normal (N) mode.
The dials are easy to use, but they're also very easy to accidentally turn when the camera is in your pocket or bag. After ruining a couple images because the EV dial had been turned in my pocket, I learned to always check the dials before shooting. It would be nice to have the dials lock in place a little better.
Retro Effects
What I found far more fun than the color effects were the shutter speed controls. There are four modes available here: normal mode, indoor mode (for low light and slower shutter), sports mode (denoted by a figure running, with a faster shutter), and B for bulb, which yes, allows you to keep the shutter open as long as you like. In theory you can do night shots with bulb mode, though in my testing this is tricky as there's no cable release.
The other fun shooting mode is double exposure. I'll confess that I have become used to shooting double exposures with digital, which allows for more precise framing since you can see the first image, so my first few attempts with Instax were pretty bad. With a little practice, I found it one of the more interesting ways to use the Mini 99. It also gave me something to do with some very expired Instax film that I had lying about. Double exposures, combined with the strange effects of expired film, made for some cool shots.
The Mini 99 uses a removable, rechargeable battery (a NP-70S). Fujifilm is claiming 100 photos per charge. It's a little difficult to test that, but this feels about right, possibly even on the conservative side. I used about a third of the battery shooting four rolls of film (and its worth noting that most of that was shot in near-freezing conditions, which always results in subpar battery performance). For most use cases the provided single battery is going to be fine. I did not notice much in the way of power loss when not using the camera in the month that I tested. It's also worth noting that you don't charge the battery directly; Fujifilm provides a separate USB-C charger, which is nice if you want multiple batteries.
A self-timer and flash control round out the options on the Mini 99, making it one of—if not the most—flexible, capable Instax cameras in Fujifilm's Instax lineup. See our Guide to Instax Cameras for more options, but if you want manual controls, the Mini 99 is the camera to get.
The only downside to the Mini 99 in my testing was that the images it produced were not as sharp as those of the Mini Evo. The manual controls of the Mini 99, especially the focusing controls, do give you some creative options the Evo doesn't have, but if you're after pure image quality, the Mini Evo remains the Instax of choice. If, on the other hand, you want more manual controls and the fun color effects, the Mini 99 is a fine Instax camera for you.
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2024-05-03 15:00:00Z
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