Fuji SQ6 - Are we having fun yet?
The very first camera I can remember taking a photo with was a Polaroid Super Colour Swinger. It was a big camera and I was barely capable of lifting it up to take a picture - but I remember finding it in box in the top of a wardrobe and deciding to adopt it. Someone must have been kind enough to buy me one pack of the expensive pull-apart film it used and I recall that it took all my strength to pull the photo sheet out of the side of the camera. Perhaps it's that experience that fostered my interest in instant photography.
However I now think that it's time that I let it go. Over the last few years I've used various instant photo devices and in this video I try out the Fuji SQ6, their latest instant camera and it's made me realise that instant photography just isn't for me.
It's likely that this review will set the cat amongst the pigeons because it seems that amongst many people there's an expectation now that any reviews have to be non-committal and wishy-washy.
"7/10 - A fun camera - for having fun with your fun friends - it's fun".
Most reviews are based upon loaners and free samples. If you upset the company lending you their review samples it's very likely you won't be sent another one. Do that too many times with too many companies and you'd have no job left.
I was interested in seeing the reviews of the Sony RX100 VI camera recently - however since Sony decided to fly all the photo bloggers over to Venice to test the camera out there - any subsequent 'hands-on reviews' may be considered to be a touch influenced.
The problem this leads to though is that whenever an independent person just buys a product with their own money and talks about any problems or misgivings that have with it - this comes across as bizarre, out of the ordinary behaviour. Surely there must be something wrong with either that person, or their device as no one else has reported these problems.
Every review of this SQ6 camera repeated one word over and over again 'fun'. I think that fun is really something that only an individual can define. Some people think jumping out of an aeroplane is fun, for some it's reading a book. So if spending a lot of money for very mediocre results is fun for you then yes this really is about the most fun you can have with a camera.
3/10 Don't Buy
UPDATE: I've shot an outro for this video that I'll be adding onto the end of it. Some people really do want to see these skits, and can get quite heated when they don't appear regularly. But after editing it, this feels like it might be a rehash of an old episode. There are only so many ideas in my head and after making sixty or so of these it's very probable that I'm starting to repeat myself.
Here it is: https://youtu.be/d1BcWGzY_sY
Comments (64)
Mat: I would like to see you compare the price of the camera and first pack of photos (£137?) to what you might buy in a compact camera and printing at boots or some kiosk for ten pictures or so. I've used instant cameras in the past and do understand the reports of "skill" being needed to take full advantage of the medium, but I think any sane person buying this product today would expect better results than yours especially considering the cost.
I just needed to buy a $170 item from Amazon, so I scoured your videos for an affiliate link to click so that you'd get the credit. Thanks for making so many enjoyable videos. Everything from the way you read the dumb comments with a straight face to the puppets makes me smile, and the content itself is always fascinating.
Thanks for doing that - every little bit helps and I haven't featured many things on Amazon recently. A year or so back someone bought a crazily expensive lens on Amazon after clicking one of my links - I think it was something like $14000 - so I think I got around $100 commission. It's possible since then that they've put some kind of cap on commissions because I don't think that kind of thing is possible any more.
Yesssss puppets!! I'm going to pretend that my pestering you on Twitter about it the other day will have had something to do with it, even though I'm sure it didn't. I shoot and develop film regularly, but I just don't get the appeal of this camera when it doesn't do any one thing particularly better than other cameras on the market. I suspect it's more of an accessory, so that other people see you using it, rather than a useful or convenient camera. Great review as always!
If you did send me anything on twitter I'll have missed it. I haven't looked on there in a week - it was just making me sad. I try and do an outro whenever possible, but I've been very under the weather for weeks and July was a bit of a disaster.
The idea that you need lots of practice and skill to use a point and shoot camera seems completely unreasonable to me. Surely the whole idea of a point and shoot is that it should give good photos without needing any particular skills or practice.
YAY!!!!! PUPPETS!!!! I love how you use humor to stick it to all those people writing to say "it's rubbish" or "you don't know what you're talking about". Two Thumbs (and a few toes) UP!!!
Hey Matt have you heard about Impossible Project? A really interesting story behind that company how they reinvented the film for classic 600 and sx-70 type polaroid cameras. They're making a camera of their own which you might want to try. I had a Mint TL-70 for the instax film which was fun at first but the bulk of the camera and the expenses made it quite useless to me.
Yes I know all about it - it's an interesting tale of bringing a company back to life. Shame it's all just so expensive though.
Thank you for bringing up the waste aspect!
It was only when I started to tidy up that I realised it really was obscene just for 10 less than mediocre pictures. I feel this will become a big problem for them in the future as people become more and more aware of these things.
Also, the reason behind the color shifting and all the always-on flash is COMPLETELY Fuji’s fault because they are way too lazy when it comes to the emulsion of their Instax line of film - in order to save money, all of their Instax film are TUNGSTEN-balanced film and are extremely not suitable for sunlight situations so they made the decision to let the flash stayed on by default so that the flashlight could potentially correct the white balance of the film, not that it actually works though...If you put an 85-B color correction filter in the front of the lens then the color should turn out fine, not that anyone will actually stick a piece of glass in front of a plastic lens of a cheaply made camera. Also, I think the little bump on the bottom of the lens is the future placement of the on/off switch for a cheaper Instax Square format camera. They just left that bit of plastic there because they didn’t want to spend more money on an entirely new plastic mold :p
I do have plans turning mine (bought at launch, ouch) into a film back for my Bronica medium format cameras so I can actually shoot Instax Square films with more accurate metering and framing, which should be a tat more fun...?
Maybe the Instax printers have better quality, they look like a neat toy. You can use your quality smartphone cam and still get fun little prints to share
Any thoughts on getting an old Polaroid 600 series camera and some Impossible/Polaroid originals film to do a comparison? I used to run a small business restoring and repairing old Polaroid cameras and would be happy to donate a 600 series camera if you're interested?
Any thoughts on picking up an old Polaroid 600 camera and using the new impossible/polaroid originals film to do a comparison? I am something of a Polaroid collector and would happily donate a 600 series camera if its something you're interested in?
Beepy sound effects from six million dollar man at the end? Cool!
Yes they're always there. There's a link in each video description to a full length rendition of the Universal computer noise effect.
Spot on Mat but I think you’re going to get a lot of outraged feedback on this one as well. :) In terms of the camera itself, I don’t mind the Lo Fi / fuzzy aesthetic but the Fuji Instax pics are genuinely always washed out looking and that I think is unacceptable. The price and waste of the film are also ridiculous. Let’s just all go back to 35mm film.
I'm shooting some 35mm at the moment with a couple of interesting cameras. I just need a day in Liverpool to finish both rolls off and then take them into a developers. A week later I'll return and see the results. Perhaps it's the waiting that I appreciate. After all every smartphone is an instant camera.
Matt, this is a very interesting review. You've stumbled into the hipster subgenre of photography called LOMOgraphy. It gets its name from the camera manufacturer named LOMO in St. Petersburg, Russia. Over 30 years ago they introduced a sorta crappy 35mm camera (a model copped from Japan's Cosina) designed for inexpensive snapshots. What happened, though, is the artsy crowd discovered that the Russian LOMO lens produced curvature of field, barrel distortion, corner falloff, and a lot of flare -- all reminiscent of two-element lenses on cameras from the 1910s thru the 1930s, as well as box cameras from the 1950s and early 1960s. The LOMO trademark now belongs to Lomographische AG in Austria. There's a vast number of variants on the LOMO theme available today, most coming out of China. These plastic-y cameras use either 35mm or 120 film, but all share the original LOMO low-grade lens designs. We analog photogs using quality vintage 35mm cameras do thank the LOMO crowd for keeping the marketplace for film alive. Without their purchases, it's quite possible that 35mm and 120 rollfilm would have already gone the way of the dinosaur .... You also mentioned the "always on" flash on your Fuji: This is copied from the Polaroid 600 film pack cameras. Their flashes also fire with every shot, to protect the user of $1/photo Polaroid films from overly-dark shadow areas in their pictures. Here in the States, there's a good market in restored Polaroid 600 cameras. I believe the buyers are the same folk who dig the Fuji Instax.
I know about the Lomography crowd - I think there was a shop in Manchester for a while - A terrible idea to open a shop there, I expect they never sold one. I can sort of understand Lomography a bit more. It's not really all that expensive and the cameras can fit in a bag. So in theory you could go on holiday with e Lomo camera and a few rolls of film. I wouldn't want to schlep a Instax around the Caribbean. The thing that I find the oddest about it though is that I'm sure the Lomo crowd wouldn't try and argue that 'you must be doing it wrong' if your photos looked bad. There seems to be an Instax mafia where Instax is brilliant and not to be questioned - the photos don't look bad - although they do look retro, but they shouldn't look soft, but they aren't supposed to look sharp, and you must be using it wrong, and it requires incredible skill to use, but it's a point and shoot and not a camera for professionals. ?!
For anyone who's interested in how product reviews are manipulated, this podcast episode makes a good listen: <a href="https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124</a>
I'll take a listen tomorrow. I've listened to all my usual podcasts this week, so that'll come in handy.
Like the Muppets, well done! And they made a good point!
Left out some photos you didn't want to show us huh? #IlluminatiConfirmed
I'm expecting some offensive comments about that on youtube -(I'll be avoiding the youtube comments - might as well be shouting down a well) - the missing pictures were a few of my nephew sitting in my car because he came round for a visit and wanted some pictures to take home to his mum and one of the Mrs eating her lunch with me in the restaurant in Liverpool where I took the picture of my kebab.
I'd like to file a complaint that the Dad muppet was not in this video. Flippin'Eck! ;-)
He wasn't the right character this time - he's not the voice of reason. That's the job of Mrs Moan. He eggs-on silly ideas and makes them more ludicrous.
I expected you to crack on the Older puppet cause Terry's front door is Green, she was just messing with him but he is colorblind to red and green.. hehe. Could do a over-the shoulder shot of the two looking at a Green entry door (are there any in the neighborhood?) . My first real camera as a kid was a kodak disk one, which was the type where when you remove the film disc you had to do it in a very dark room or it'd wipe. Felt like shifting it back into a paper sleeve for development was like disarming a bomb.
Nice video! I sort of get the reason why people would use these. It's the same reason I enjoy the challenge of trying to get great photos out of my old Sony Mavica, for example. There's just something fun about it, even though the camera is bulky and takes rubbish photos compared to my smart phone. But I don't think I could justify the cost of using the instant film camera.
I see Terry's red door and I want it painted black.
That was hilarious, and spot on. Thanks for another informative take on technology and marketing!
@8:56 Techmoan's recreation of the cover to Phil Collins: No Jacket Required.
I knew I'd seen this somewhere before - more like the recent reissue with old Phil though.
As someone who really does enjoy using instant film, I could not agree more with this review.
I don't really see the connection between nostalgia and low quality. Sure, when I look at pictures of my parents from the 1970ies they look washed out or have a red tint. But they didn't look like that when they were made. No one knew the picture would degrade so fast otherwise they would have been a big flop. But today everything nostalgic has to be bad so it's cool. And everything is remembered worse than it actually was. Vinyl always skipped, tapes were always eaten by the player - both sounded really bad of course. I was at a party recently and a vinyl record was playing. Someone actually complained that there were no pops and crackle and that it doesn't sound like a record but like a CD...
Very comprehensive as always, Mat. I don't think I'll rush our and buy one. The best instant camera I had was a Kodak EK-100 - until Polaroid sued Kodak and Kodak had to buy them all back! And now it seems, Polaroid tried doing the same to Fuji for the camera you just reviewed: <a href="https://www.dpreview.com/news/1387139188/fujifilm-and-polaroid-to-begin-legal-battle-over-photo-borders" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dpreview.com/news/1387139188/fujifilm-and-polaroid-to-begin-legal-battle-over-photo-borders</a>
All these companies must be thoroughly sick of the patent trolls in the US. So whoever bought the Polaroid patent portfolio thinks that Polaroid invented the square. I think there might be prior art there - I believe the square was invented by accident by Gustav Square in 1873 when he dropped two triangles on the floor of his lab.
Not watched the video yet but might have had a similar experience - we bought my (6 year old) daughter a Fuji Instax Mini to try and get her interested in photography. I honestly thought the camera was faulty after taking the first set of photos, and had to do some research online to get my expectations rebooted! I get the idea that it's lo-fi, but it seems like lo-fi done really badly. Taking pictures in glorious sunlight results in weird dark images. Taking a photo in less than perfect light gets you a black square. Not fun!
To be fair, the old Polaroid instant cameras, back in the day, were expensive to use as well (even the camera itself) and the photos were even worse than this Fuji (they all kind of looked like the one you took of the green truck!) - Even back then, the novelty wore off pretty fast, and there was no better smartphone option back then, which also has instant gratification. I think this is a toy for teenage girls with wealthy parents!
Yes that's the market - strange though how many angry men want to stick up for Instax - you'd think they had shares in the company.
I think I know where you went wrong. Out of the amber, green and purple filters, you didn’t use the last one all the time. I’m assuming that is the rose tinted one. Nostalgia is a funny thing that can make you give something much worse a much better review. Oh and free trips to Venice.
Brilliant - that is the kind of comment that you can only make on Patreon where there are no people to misunderstand it.
It effing sucks. In other words, my Mavica makes better pictures AND saves them to frigging 3½" Floppy Disks. Way cooler and way more fun producing than this piece of garbage, especially if you use an old Win98 or OS 9 notebook to look at the pictures. ;) Just ask David or Clint, they will surely be on my side here. :D
It's a shame the film is so expensive. I got an old insta camera at a yard sale for like £2, but I can't imagine paying £20 for film.
I own an older Instax as well a Diana F+ with the compatible instant back because I also thought this would be fun. First, I don't like the pictures. I expected them to be some kind of retro-imperfect but they are just washed out and the colors often seem a bit cold. Maybe that's what Polaroid always looked, but I don't really know. Second, the price per photo, even though it's just a few cents, very much keep me from having fun.
These are quite popular here in Japan. I think for two reasons: 1) The poor washed out quality (especially with the flash on) works like an Instagram filter for girls so they look "better" (smoother, whiter skin). 2) They're used at meet & greet events with idols and minor celebs. You pay 1000 yen, get to take an instant photo with your idol, and then they sign it with your name on the spot with a marker pen. This is a surprisingly big industry - I've seen people with binders of hundreds of signed instax photos, I guess it plays to the collection mentality.
Perhaps I should start sending out washed-out pictures of myself signed by a muppet for £10 a piece (including p&p). Sounds like a good business.
I think 'fun' in this context means it's just a toy, don't have any expectations of quality. Your price calculations seem very fair as I'm sure many people will buy one or two films and lose interest when the novelty wears off. Also, keep out of reach of small children. I'm a 50-year-old bloke and when I saw those filters in their wrappers I instantly thought 'sweeties'. If that's my reaction, how is a child to know any better?
That's a good point, they do look tasty. I was thinking that the colour filters would be the kind of thing you would have to remember to carry around with you - a compartment on the camera for them would have been a better idea.
Well, guess who's not being flown to Venice to do a camera review next time? Somehow, I can't imagine Kai Wong was quaking in his boots anyhow. Seriously Mat, I think you need to wear a baseball cap on backwards to get involved in that sort of thing! Good review of the camera. My 20 year old daughter has one of the earlier models and loves it, despite the terrible picture quality. Of course, when Daddy buys your film, the outrageous cost is less of an issue. I think for the iPhone generation, having a physical picture to hold and maybe give to a friend is the winning novelty factor that explains the popularity of these cameras. Like you, I had a big Polaroid camera in the 1970s and the picture quality from that was pretty grim compared to even a cheap film camera, but the novelty of getting a real photo after just a minute outweighed that somehow. I also had to laugh when you compared the phone pictures to the prints - not many years ago the comparison would have been the other way around with the phone picture being that much worse than a print. Overall, yet another really good review - I am enjoying these shorter videos, but please don't let making these put you off doing some of the more in-depth investigations you do so well. Enjoy the heat!
This video took me two months to get together - it's really just the length it is because that's all it needs to cover everything, however it took me as long to make as one of the longer videos. I've been unwell for a few weeks now and it's made it difficult to get started on anything complicated as I don't have the energy. The quick videos I released recently have been a failure. I thought they might be a way to show something that wouldn't otherwise get a video - but financially I'd have been better taking a day off instead, and they also lost subscribers.
Well I certainly found your review was Fun, although I can't guarantee I watched it properly. Thank you.
I think you were holding it wrong ;-) - Seriously though, I'll never get the mentality of anyone trying to defend a company or product that they have no financial interest in. Who cares if the bloke down the road would never buy the same car as me - I wouldn't go and knock on his door and try and convince him why he's wrong and he must conform.
I started with Fuji Instax, but after I finished the first pack, I sent it back. I didn’t think it was fun. I now have a Polaroid Landcamera 330 with peel apart film (type 100, like the Super Colour Swinger you mentioned). I do have fun with this one! Until my film runs out, I have 7 packs left in the refrigerator.
Yes I was looking at all the films Fuji discontinued in recent years and wasn't that one of the ones they stopped in 2016 - I heard a few people stocked up then. I'm doing another film camera type review at some point - I've been shooting photos for it recently and again the film I'm using is being discontinued soon.
These are just toys for people who are nostalgic of instant cameras or never used them back in the day and are curious. Expensive, impractical (in the modern world), low quality. To them i suggest to buy an old Polaroid: film might be more expensive, but you can find cheap Polaroid cameras on eBay or thrift shops. When i take a photo, it is a memory i wish to save: so i'll always prefer quality over gimmicks. Instant cameras made sense in a world dominated by film, not in the digital age. As for your thoughts on reviews, i fully agree. I have several friends who are bloggers or journalists, not in tech but they write about cars, and knowing what happens behind the scenes i stopped considering online reviews, even car magazines nowadays are too biased by the manufacturers. I sometimes read/watch tech reviews, but mostly for entertainment purpouses, i rarely make any decision based solely on them. And when i find honest ones, like yours, they are much appreciated. Keep up the good work!
Finally a good, honest review! Thank you!!
I was given a Fuji Instax camera as a present in 2001. I only used it with 2 packs of film as the photo quality was terrible. Pictures were washed out and there was no sharpeness to any features, so everything looked slightly out of focus. It appears things haven't improved in the last 17 years!
Everyone is just so positive about these cameras online that I began to feel that all my experiences with Instax must be some kind of strange anomaly.
They say that fun comes at a price, but that is expensive fun. A smartphone and a decent printer can do much better and for a lower price.
if you wanna try again expecting different results try the Leica one :)
I'm with you. It is an expensive toy that takes below average quality pictures. My grandchildren love to get a proper colour photo of themselves within a few seconds though. More of a "blast from the past" & a conversation piece. For the £125 you could get a proper camera producing excellent photos, although not within 30 seconds.. FUN ? Yeah, well, maybe for a few packets of film..