Fujifilm instax mini 41: an instant camera for selfie nostalgia for 110 euros
Fujifilm is offering us a return to analogue magic, this time in the form of the brand new instax mini 41 instant camera. It's the successor to the mini 40, which does the same thing but looks a little better, has a couple of smart features and costs 110 euros. And yes, it's still a camera that doesn't connect to Wi-Fi, doesn't have Bluetooth, and can't send photos to your phone - because the main idea here is to get a small piece of paper with your face on it right away.
Among the updates is automatic exposure (it's hard to believe we're writing about this in 2025), which detects the lighting and adjusts the shutter speed and flash. You don't need to twist anything, just press the button and magic (sometimes) happens. The close-up mode with parallax correction is for those who take selfies in the "eyes in the frame, chin somewhere in the next area" style. The viewfinder adjusts to centre the subject without cropping the forehead - a useful feature, but not a revolution.
Another upgrade is the design. The camera has orange accents, a metallic finish and a textured body. Yes, it looks nice. And yes, it still requires consumables in the form of Instax mini photo paper, each print of which costs like a cup of coffee (about $15 for a pack of 10 photos). But aesthetes and fans of the "straight to hand" know what they are paying for.
The camera weighs a little less than a packet of sugar and fits easily into a backpack or even a large pocket. Fujifilm promises that the instax mini 41 will be available in Europe from 17 April 2025, so get ready for another round of analogue hype on Instagram (ironic, of course).
All in all, the instax mini 41 is about late twentieth-century style, simplicity and a little bit of impracticality in the digital age. Because sometimes you want to take a picture of something without thinking about filters, hashtags and archives in the cloud. But for 110 euros, you want something interesting and digital - at least the option to do a double take. Although, who are we to destroy the very idea of snapshots, the point of which is that they cannot be reproduced?
