Fujifilm Instax mini 8 | Tips & tricks

Turning and moving around. Taking some test photo's on my phone. Then some more turning and moving. And then finally: 'click!' and the polaroid picture rolls out.
I always want to prepare my polaroid pictures perfectly, because you can't do them over again. They have to be perfect in one time. And although they come out very nice quite often, it's easy to make mistakes. I've had several bad pictures, but also some pictures I'm very happy with. So here it is: my tips and tricks for your Fujifilm Instax mini 8.

Let's get started... :)

Tips

Based on mistakes from my own experience. 

Mirrors

This was my very first picture. I thought: 'Wouldn't it look cool for my first picture to take a picture of me taking a picture?!' So I walked over to the mirror and clicked to take a picture. I didn't know there would be a flash and when the picture was fully developed, it was all black with a tiny bit of color in the middle. I was not very happy :(. 

So tip #1: don't take pictures in the mirror.

Keep your eyes open! 

This one may seem obvious, but it's very important not to blink when you take the picture! (Someone blinked in my second picture.) If you're taking a picture of people, especially if they've never seen a polaroid camera being used, tell them before you take a picture that there will be a flash and that they have to make sure to keep their eyes open. :)

Tip #2: keep your eyes open when someone's taking a picture of you.

Blurry

This was my third picture. Very blurry. (It was so sad: my first three pictures all had a mistake, haha. I still like them all, though, because they've thought me these tips and there's a memory with each one, too.) Anyways, your pictures get blurry when you're too close to them. I'd probably want to have at least about a 60 cm distance from the object or people I'm taking a picture of. 

Tip #3: keep enough distance between you and the object or people you're taking a picture of. 

Center

I really like this picture: it feels so warm and Christmassy and when you see the picture you just think of home. And I also quite like that the Christmas tree is not in the center of the picture. But you might not always want that. Actually when I was thinking I how I wanted this picture to look, I planned for the tree being in the center. The reason why it's not centered is because the view finder is not right above the lens. It is slightly higher and more to the left. So when you're taking a picture of something that is close to you (but obviously not too close, or else it will turn out blurry) keep that in mind.

Tip #4 Keep in mind that the view finder is slightly higher and more to the left of the lens.

Flash

When you turn on your camera, it gives you a recommendation for the 'flash mode'. It's best to follow this, because if let's say it recommends to put your camera in the house mode and you switch it to the cloudy or even sunny mode (like I did) your picture will be way too dark and it'll look as if you took it at, like, midnight. What you can do, is put your camera on Hi-Key flash mode when the recommendation is house mode (trick!).  This will make it look very light, which I think will look cool, too, although it won't look so natural. I've never tried this before, but I think I will sometime.

This is the little table that is shown in the manual for a lighter picture:

(PS. I dropped my cactus, (whoops) so that's what you see on the right side of the photo... )

Tip #5: Stay with the recommended flash mode. (Unless you want to experiment with it or want a much lighter picture).

Tricks

For some inspiration and taking elephantastic pictures.

The pictures above are three of my favorites. Two of them (the vertical ones) were taken in Barcelona and the horizontal one was taken in Schieronnikoog (I also have posts about my trips there: The best of Barcelona & May in Schiermonnikoog).

Horizontal, vertical or slanted

When people take a picture with a polaroid camera, they usually take a picture holding the camera vertically. For a landscapes or so, taking a horizontal picture looks very good and taking a slanted picture gives it a cool playful effect.




Angles
Taking a picture from a different angle than usual gives your picture a really cool effect. Be creative! :) I took the polaroid of the palm tree in Barcelona from underneath, if you get what I mean. I crouched down under the palm tree and pointed my camera up. This also gave the picture the perfect amount of lighting and the picture turned out very sharp.

Natural lighting 
Natural lighting is my favorite light. My polaroid pictures taken outdoors look the most natural and have better lighting than my pictures taken inside. If you are, let's say, taking a picture of a group of people, I'd recommend taking it outside, so that you can use the gorgeous lighting of the sun ;).

Ombre
On a lot of my polaroid pictures I have a little ombre effect around the corners. In my picture of the beach in Barcelona, you can see this very well. The sky is a beautiful blue way at the top and becomes lighter and lighter. Awhh, I love it so much :). To be honest, I don't know how to do this, or if you can even manually do this, but I just wanted to point it out, because it makes your pictures sooo pretty.

Double picture
What also looks super cool is to have a picture of a polaroid picture with the things that are on the polaroid picture in the background. Okay, this sound very complicated. But here's what I mean:

source

This is a picture from Urban Outfitters' instagram. (Note the beautiful ombre sky in the picture!)

And here's another one:

source

This is a picture from a photography gifts and gear store (Photojojo).

I haven't done this yet, but I'm definitely going to try this soon! (It'll make a great Instagram photo ;). )


I hope these tips and tricks helped you out, and keep taking awesome pictures!

xoxo Mia