Review: Fujifilm Instax Wide Evo

The joy of seeing an image slowly emerge in real life has made instant or polaroid cameras hugely popular. As soon as you press the shutter button, a small process starts where a paper image is developed right before your eyes. The downside is that it happens every time you press the shutter button.

But with Fujifilm’s new Instax WIDE Evo, you can decide which images you want to print from the camera and save the photo paper for the best shots.

The Instax WIDE Evo is a hybrid digital camera and printer, and images are stored in the camera’s internal memory or on a microSD card. The images can be printed on Instax Wide Film, which is 108 x 86 mm in size. The actual image area is 99 x 62 mm, which is 115 per cent larger than regular Instax film, and with a 16 megapixel image chip behind a 16 mm wide angle, the image quality is quite good.

It’s better than the other Fujifilm instax cameras and the WIDE Evo is also the most expensive and advanced of them all.

The lens is bigger and brighter with a 2.4 aperture and the camera’s automatic exposure controls shutter speeds from a quarter of a second to 1/8,000s. There’s no manual exposure control, the closest you get is exposure compensation of ±2 steps.

But there are many other fun things you can do with the camera.

Film and lens effects

The large screen gives you great control over both the subject and the settings. There’s a limited settings menu here, but the ace up its sleeve are the camera’s settings for creative photographers.

Two setting dials on the sides switch between 10 different film settings, and film and lens effects can be combined as desired. The ring around the lens adjusts the strength of the filter effects and you can see the effect of the settings when you turn the ring before taking the photo. You can save up to 10 of your favourite combinations of film and lens effects.

There are also five setting options for film styles. Just press the oval button on the front and you can scroll through them to select date labelling or other styles, for example.

There’s a small switch on the front that switches between normal focal length and an even wider wide angle, and above it is a small selfie mirror.

Images are captured by pressing the shutter button on the front, you can scroll through the images and when you find one you want a copy of, you can start printing by turning the print crank on the side of the camera. After a few seconds you have an image in your hands, and a minute and a half to a minute later the image is ready to be developed.

Photo quality

The camera can also print images from your mobile phone. Download the instax app and select WIDE Evo and you can select images on your mobile phone, add effects, frames and text and print from the camera. The images from the WIDE Evo can also be transferred to your mobile phone and shared as instax images wherever you want. The camera can also be controlled remotely from the mobile app. This is handy if you put the camera on a tripod, for example.

You get a lot of creative control over the images, but little control over the technical aspects. The camera controls all the basics such as light metering, focus, aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

This can sometimes lead to under or overexposed images. The trick is to select exposure compensation before you take the photo and make some adjustments.

The image quality is not bad at all. The 318 dpi resolution is acceptable and images are visibly sharper and less blurry than those from cheaper instax cameras. Not just bigger, as the camera uses cassettes with larger instax film.

The larger image area is an advantage in itself and the camera’s image sensor and optics work well together to give images good colour saturation and contrast. But what really makes the camera fun to use is all the opportunities you get to put your own creative touch on your instax images.

Conclusion

The Fujifilm Instax WIDE Evo is the best instax camera to date. It’s also the most expensive, but that’s understandable. The images are slightly better with larger images from a 16 Mp image sensor and with many filter effects, photographers have plenty of opportunities to add their own creative touch to the images. As a bonus, you can use the camera as a printer for your mobile photos and, most importantly, you can choose which images to print.