Instax Wide 300.

New toy. Yay.

This freakin’ thing is HUGE at 4″ deep, nearly 5″ tall, and 7 1/2″ wide. It weighs in at 1.62 lbs.

The pix are good sized, with the actual image 2 7/16″ tall x 3 7/8″ wide. The whole integral film packet is is 3 3/8″ x 4 1/4″.

I came with a snap-on close-up filter, but ~16″ is as close as it’ll let you get.

I opened the box, attached the strap, plugged in the batteries, then I burned through a 10-pack of the wide film walking around the house, garage, and yards.

Fun camera. It’ll take a little getting use to the heft, and framing with the viewfinder, but it does take pretty cool shots.

Vic’s addiction, Dead roses, Buddha, Lieve’s addition.

Discoveries.

Totally worthy.

It’s funny how sometimes you look at a picture (or 3) and dismiss them as not being worthy. They’re put in an envelope or box, stored away, and quickly forgotten.

I came across these three Instax Mini 8 shots just before the start of Fall ‘Roid Week. They were in a Instax Monochrome box on my desk, a box I hadn’t opened for who knows how long.

I shuffled through all the pictures and noticed these three under-exposed shots being somewhat similar. Interesting.

Only then did it dawn on me to group them as an abstract triptych.

I like the way they look together.

The arc of progress.

Old, but not dead.

Over the past three weeks I’ve been checkin’ out the #ShittyCameraChallenge tag on Twitter and I’ve noticed that folks are using any old shitty camera they can get their hands on, including ‘vintage’ digital.

I still have my old Pentax Optio 300GS. It’s a tiny compact digital camera I bought in 2003. It’s a whoppin’ 3.2 MP, uses a 128 MB Compact Flash card, and it runs on AA batteries.

It’s not really shitty, but it is old.

It’s not really shitty, but it is old. And after 17 years, the sensor has a handful of dead pixels.

So, yesterday I walked around the house, garage, and backyard shooting whatever caught my eye.

These two shots had a similar feel, seemed meant for each other. A wagon wheel, and leaves from one of the Pride of Barbados plants out back.