Mostly during the holiday season we’ve been busy photographing holiday parties for others and setting up fun photo booths but we also received a gift of our own, the Lomo’Instant Wide. This Lomo Instant Wide camera review is a quick one for those thinking about it as a gift for your photographer friends and is based on our week with it so far!
We reviewed the Lomo’Instant a while ago and were thrilled when we heard about the Wide since the photos are much larger than the Instax Mini format. That being said the first thing you notice when you unbox the Lomo’Instant Wide camera is how large it is! And carrying it around you get that same kind of response from others. It reminded me of the Fuji 6×9 camera in how much larger than a DSLR that it is but it’s kinda neat that way.
One of the best things aside from the format and size of the prints is the creative options the camera has. The controls are also more intuitive than on the Lomo’Instant Mini and since the camera is so large, it’s got more room for all the buttons etc. The remote control is also a neat feature which lets you easily set up group shots with yourself in them, and of course the Wide also has the selfie mirror on the front too.
The MX button for multiple exposures is a fun way to play with it and the Wide also came with a neat ‘filter’ called a Splitzer which lets you take multiple exposures and covers up part of the frame so you can “slice and dice your multiple exposure photos.”
One challenge we saw was that for backlit shots, even setting the exposure compensation to +1 could yield underexposed photos so the camera does come with a PC sync cord port so you can attach an external flash. Or we just used a slave flash and it fixed the shots (depending on which type of external flash you use, you’ll have to experiment with power output/angle, etc.)
We hope this Lomo Instant Wide camera review was useful – we’ll likely do a more in-depth one once we’ve spent more time with it but wanted to get this posted before Christmas.
