_valerian

If you can find them, triple packs of Polaroid 600 film in Japan are about $60 each. That is about two dollars a picture. For less than thirty polaroids, Fujifilm recently released a new edition of their popular (in Japan) Cheki instant camera.

Granted, the only new thing about it is the 2 colors that it comes in (”Chocolate”, and white) but it is cute and it is selling well, I was told. The film is called Instanx Mini, and is about 700 yen a pack- the two 5 packs in the picture are 3150 yen each- that’s 100 photos for the same price as thirty polaroid ones. Granted, they are not much bigger than a business card. Still, instant cameras still are unique in that they (nearly) instantly give you an actual and tangible photograph soon after clicking the shutter.

So guess who wishes they’d have checked their Leica’s fast speeds before going abroad and shooting (and then developing and printing) 16 rolls of film?
While only about 15% of all the photos I got back today have that black blurry bar, it seems that 1/1000 of a second at f 1.4 is not a good combo with my Leica. Anything else shot wide open at a speed less than 1/250 came out fine though, including photos that were not of sisters, travel agents, or student assistants. Looks like a trip to the Leica repair shop in Ginza is in order…

If these were for some reason the only two pictures that came out from my trip, I’d still say it was all worth it.

That’s my brother on his Triumph.