Instax cameras have proven to be extremely popular, especially with some demographics. The Instax Mini 13 is the latest in the company’s line of easy-to-use instant cameras. With its fully analogue operation, simple controls and (relatively) low price, it’s a great entry point into instant photography – but will it make it onto our list of the best instant cameras you can buy right now? Let’s take a closer look…

　　At A Glance $95/£80 Compatible with Instax Mini Film (86 x 54mm prints) Selfie Mirror Close-Up Mode Self-Timer Choice of five colours: Clay White, Frost Blue, Candy Pink, Lagoon Green, Dreamy Purple The Instax Mini 13 follows on from 2023’s Instax Mini 12, and not a huge amount has changed, at least in terms of the internals.

　　Aesthetically, the 13 looks a bit different from the 12. It’s been compared to a cloud, or a cushion, with its billowing/puffy exterior. You might like that, you might not – I think it’s quite fun.

　　There’s five different colours to choose from. I asked for Lagoon Green for my review sample, and what turned up I think is closer to blue in colour (so much so that I actually checked it definitely was what I asked for). If you are at all particular about the colour of your camera, I’d urge you to see one in real life before committing to purchase if possible.

　　Features As for the camera itself, it’s the same as the Instax Mini 12 in that it has just two shooting modes.

　　There’s the Standard mode, for shooting most subjects. As there’s automatic exposure and flash control, this isn’t something you can change. There’s shutter speeds of 1/2sec to 1/250 sec, but it’ll all be decided for you.

　　The lens itself has two elements and is a 60mm f/12.7 equivalent. The standard focusing range is 0.3m and beyond.

　　A second shooting mode, Close-Up is for, well close-ups. Here, the focusing range is 0.3m-0.5m. You’ll also use this for selfies.

　　As the name implies, the camera uses Instax Mini film. The credit card sized film is 86 x 54mm, with a picture size of 62 x 46mm. It takes around 90 seconds for a picture to develop. One of the best things about Instax Mini is that it’s available in a range of fun colours and frames, so you can really show off your creativity when you’re using it. A new film variety, “Pastel Galaxy” was introduced to celebrate the launch of the 13.

　　The Instax Mini 13 uses 2x AA batteries, which Fujifilm claims should be good for 10 packs of Instax Mini film, so that’s 100 pictures (and a lot of bucks) before you’ll need to change those out again.

　　With the announcement of this latest model, Fujifilm also updated the Instax UP! App, which you can use to digitally scan, import, organise and store your Instax photos, should you feel so inclined.

　　Build and Handling The Instax Mini 13 is a cute camera, but it’s a little on the bulky side – you’re not going to slip this into a pocket, but, a small bag should do the job nicely. In fact, you can buy one of those separately if you want everything to be matchy-matchy. I made do with one I already owned for the purposes of this review though.

　　Loading Instax film is super simple. Simply pop open the back door, line-up the yellow marks on the camera with the yellow mark on the film pack, and close the door. Press the shutter button and the film pack’s black protective cover will pop out. You’ll now be ready to shoot. It’s important that you do not open the film door again until you’ve finished using your film pack, as the film will be exposed and rendered unusable from that point onwards.

　　Designed to be as simple to use as possible, even my toddler can figure out how to shoot with this. All you need to do is rotate the lens barrel from the “off” to the “on” position, the lens will pop out from the housing and you’ll be ready to go – well you will when the flash has warmed up – it doesn’t take long though, only a couple of seconds.

　　Alternatively, you can twist the lens barrel a little further and you’ll be in close-up mode.

　　Look through the viewfinder, a “Real image finder” with 0.37x magnification to line up your shot, and press the large shutter button on the front of the camera. Wait for the Instax film to pop out, pull it out from the camera and 90 seconds later your picture should be ready. In reality I find it takes a little longer than that to be fully settled, but either way it’s fun to watch it develop in real-time (it’s a bit like magic, or it is to my small child anyway).

　　You’ll see that the counter on the back of the camera goes down every time you take a photo, so you’ll always know exactly how many you’ve got left, plus when it’s time to change the film pack.

　　I find it slightly annoying that you can’t turn off the flash. Not because pictures don’t benefit from it – they often, or in fact almost always do – but if you’re ever in a location where you don’t want to / can’t use a flash, then there’s nothing you can do about it. You could disobey the instruction manual and put your finger over the flash to dampen it, I suppose.

　　When looking through the viewfinder, if you have Close Up mode engaged, parallax correction will be employed to help you frame better. When shooting in the normal mode I found you get used to what will and won’t be included in the shot after a while – generally speaking, there’s a lot more of the top of the frame included than you might expect.

　　A small selfie mirror on the front of the lens helps you to line-up selfies. You’ll want to shoot with Close-Up mode engaged when holding the camera out in front of you.

　　An alternative is to use the Self-Timer, a new feature for the Instax Mini 13. With this you can choose between 2 or 10 seconds of self-timer, by rotating a small dial around the shutter release. You’ll see the light around the shutter flashing to count-down the seconds.

　　With this, you’ll probably have the Instax Mini 13 resting on a surface and be a little further away from the camera, so you’ll be better off back in Standard shooting mode. It’s also useful for group shots.

　　One thing to note here, there’s no tripod thread, so you really are relying on a surface being available. One nifty little thing however is that there’s a “wedge” attached to the hand strap which you can place underneath the Mini 13 to angle it upwards – not as good as a tripod, sure, but it’s a decent start.

　　Image Quality Look, nobody is buying an Instax camera – especially a “cheap” one for high-end image quality. They’re buying it for fun and the nostalgia of using an instant camera.

　　The pictures that the Instax Mini 13 produce meet that brief pretty well. By no means perfect, but they’re fun and capture a moment. They’re also so small that imperfections aren’t exactly obvious, or if anything add to the fun.

　　The Close-Up mode works–ish. By which I mean you’re not going to win any macro photography awards with this thing – but you can take some pics of your dinner or your donuts and they’ll be (roughly) in focus.

　　I think the best results are for people and portrait shots, making it ideal for parties and holidays and so on. It’s also pretty good for scenes with lots of blue skies and bright surrounds.

　　Lower light conditions, where the subject is far away from the lens, should be avoided, but again for people and portraits, because of the flash, the results are pretty good there.

　　Naturally, this being analogue, you have to pay for any mistakes by using up film. And although it’s not super-expensive by any means, when every shot costs you real cold-hard cash, it certainly makes you stop and think before firing off that shutter. Still, at least there’s not a lot to figure out here.

　　Verdict I have used quite a few Instax cameras over the years, and my favourite is probably the square format ones. But, the Instax Mini prints are pretty cute and being able to slip a little picture into your wallet is always good fun.

　　Being deliciously simple to use, the Instax Mini 13 is a good way for anyone who wants to experiment with analogue, have a little nostalgia in their lives and/or have fun at parties and so on to get started with.

　　If you’ve already got an Instax Mini 12, or indeed an even older model, there’s not a huge amount here to tempt you to upgrade – the self-timer function is quite useful though, so if you think it’s something you’d use often, it’s worth thinking about.

　　At under $100/£80, arguably the Instax Mini 13 is a novelty or gift purchase. You have to factor in the cost of Instax film (about $10-$12 a pack depending on the design) too though, of course.

　　Thanks to that cost-per-picture factor, it’s not a camera that you’re going to whip out and use for every shot, but for capturing fun occasions and doing something a little bit different than your boring old smartphone, it’s great fun to play with.

　　Related reading:

　　Best-instant-cameras-and-printers Instax vs Lomography: 3 reasons why Instax reigns supreme I tried out Lomography’s new Half-frame Simple Use camera and I think it’s the PERFECT camera for film beginners Do you want to win some great prizes for your photography? Enter your photos in ourInternational Amateur Photographer of the Year competition. Free entry for photographers aged 13-21.

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