Fujifilm INSTAX Wide 400 Instant Camera – Sage Green

Great gift for photograph lovers, I wish it came in other colors
I really like this camera, it’s easy to use, it’s easy to load the film, and the quality of the pictures is great. The only downside is that I noticed the film can come out a bit dark and blurry when you take photos indoors. I’m not sure if I still need to get used to the settings of the camera, but I’m struggling a little bit with it. But as for cost value, I think it’s great and could be an amazing gift for someone who loves to take photos.

Will not buy a Fuji product again
This chunky thing completely broke after 2-3 months of use, after being used for almost a dozen photos in its total 2-3 month lifetime of use. Specifically what has been happening is that the film fails to eject right after taking a photo and so gets every other piece of film stuck behind it. In my review from a year ago (just below this) I mentioned this issue and was optimistic that this issue would resolve, but it never did. I reached out to Fuji support maybe around 15-ish times in total over phone and email. Getting in touch was a littler harder than expected, maybe half of my emails/replies received no response unless I kept re-asking the same questions, and my calls often went to random voicemails during business hours after being on hold for a long time. When I did connect, I kept getting the same replies about how this was likely due to issues with old batteries and/or something wrong with the specific film packet/carton, and was always instructed to replace these. Well, after spending an extra $150 on replacing the batteries and film (when trying to see if adjusting something fixed this issue a new pack of film is needed since each time you open the camera body, all the film gets overexposed and cannot be used at all; I ultimately was buying a lot of film packs to only test 1 photo and waste 9 others). Finally I got connected with someone at Fuji who listened and gave me a reference number so that I could send this in to the official Fuji repair shop. Sadly I had to cover the shipping and insurance myself though. It took around a month for it to get serviced and then another week for shipping back. When I did get it back, the photos sadly still did not eject. I tried following up with them more times after this but the response is normally just, “We can try to fix it at our official repair shop again, the hourly rate for repairs is $xx plus any replacement parts”, “We cannot honor the camera’s warranty since you got a dozen photos to work and this means its not a manufacturer problem”, or “Have you tried replacing the batteries/film”. In the last year I have spent a bit under $500 on this camera overall, and got near dozen photos to show for it, close to 200 pieces of over-exposed film, and a gigantic paper weight. While I really liked the instax mini (and the fact that it did not have problems), this experience has unfortunately made me feel sour about Fuji as a whole. I am worried about having an issue with a more expensive piece of equipment and going through this again, but where I have invested 10x-100x what I have for this polaroid camera.This issue is not specific to me, when trying to search for easy fixes myself I came across many videos/posts/comments on social media of others in the same position what were saying one of two things: how do I fix this? OR: this is a manufacturing issue and Fuji will not help us. The big 3.5″ pictures are really cool, so if you do end up buying one just make sure you buy extra film and insurance for it in case this Fuji did not fix this yet. And if you do buy this and have a similar issue, do not spend a lot of time worrying you did something wrong or let the customer service talk down to you. In any case I just feel burnt and have since found alternatives.——————————————Over the years I have saved hundreds of memories on my INSTAX mini 90 and wanted to make the jump to its big brother. First off I have to say that not only is it nice to be guessing across a bunch of minute settings as the mini 90 makes you do, but the fidelity/quality of the picture itself is so much better! Initially I had thought that the larger film might be have lower quality since there are only so much printing technology to fit into such a small space but I have been incredibly surprised by how balanced and crisp the images come out! Another nice aspect of it is the ergonomics of the camera, it just feels so nice and direct to hold and take photos with. I would absolutely buy this again, but I would be remiss to not mention a few drawbacks. The first is that there is two boxes in the ocular lens, one solid one and one dashed one, one is recommended for close up photos, the other is for further photos. The hard thing about this camera is that due to the spacing of the objective and ocular lenses there is hind of a progression of placements that the center of the photo will need to be in depending on its distance. For the first 20 photos or so I had to get the right ‘feel’ for where I should actually be placing the target of the photo in the ocular lens so that it lines up with the objective lens. You’ll have a lot of initial photos with your target meaningfully off center till you get the ‘feel’ for it, and that’s proven a headache when asking others to take photos of my friends and I. Second huge issue I had was that the film had experienced a pretty bad failure to feed, which I have never had on my mini 90. On my second film pack I had taken 3 photos already and then when I went to take a fourth no film was coming out and it kept trying to come out for as long as the camera was on. After turning it off and trying again it was clear that there was some issue with it feeding. I eventually opened up the film while tightly as possible and took out the bent film that was causing the issue. After putting it back in I would that the entire pack was already overexposed. The last film in the pack ended up actually containing parts of the photo I wanted but it was washed out to the point that it was only salvageable if you accepted it as being “artsy”. Third issue is that there aren’t enough after market products for this camera, but that is slowly changing. I would have loved to purchase all the equipment that I have for my mini 90, but it either doesn’t exist yet or is just now being released. Fourth and final issue is that it comes with an external clip on lens for very up close photos that is its own separate piece, its proven annoying to constantly remember to pack this piece and never lose it. I may end up drilling a very carefully placed hole in the plastic of this extra clip on lens so that I can tie it to the camera’s strap so I stop forgetting it when I want to use it and not constantly worry about losing it. All of these cons can be worked around eventually, but the failure to feed film in correctly was frustrating, time consuming, expensive, and something I never had an issue with on the mini. For reference I have put 5 film packs through this camera and this has only happened on the second one, so my failure rate is 20% for now, but I hope it doesn’t happen again.

Excelente
Amoooo

OMG I’M OBSESSED
This camera is everything I’ve been waiting for. I have an instant mini 11 and it’s a great camera, especially for parties, but I wanted something wider. The camera is incredibly easy to use, it’s an excellent choice for kids to adults as a gift, the pictures are wide and beautiful, although you need to have adequate light going or they turn out dim. The flash isn’t super bright but works great for close up shots. I think this camera is exceptional and I’m looking forward to all the photos I’ll be taking for years to come!

The lenses cover is not fixed

Llego en buen estado y antes de lo previsto.

Good instax, works better than wide 300