Believe it or not, the younger generation that loves Fujifilm Instax film doesn’t even believe that it’s film. That’s what we were told a while back from Fujifilm, but photographer Robert Mann believes otherwise. He recently put together a video as part of a series talking about Fujifilm Instax and explaining why the instaprints (yes, that’s what they’re also called) are indeed film as well as the history.
If you cannot see the video above, please head to our desktop website or mobile website to check it out.
Fujifilm Instax is a type of positive film in the same way that Polaroid film and Impossible Project film is. You see, positive film is also made in the form of Velvia, Pro 100, X Pro 200 and other emulsions. But those emulsions are shot in 35mm and larger format cameras without the emulsion being built in. With Instant film, the chemicals are built into the film and when the film is ejected, the chemicals roll through the image to develop it. Therefore, Hamm believes Instax Film to be positive film and therefore a piece of real film.
In many ways this makes sense: the film works in a different way from some other Instant films though. The now gone Fujifilm peel apart film used to give users both a negative and a positive. In order to develop the negative, you’d basically just use some bleach or toilet bowl cleaner with bleach in order to remove the back layer. The chemicals are otherwise built in–and sometimes pretty sticky to work with. Many photographers, this one included are going to miss that film and the absolute magic that it was capable of creating.
Check out the video from Robert Hamm at his YouTube Channel. Be sure to also take a look at the rest of the series which is fairly informative.
