Black Friday this year coincided with an England vs USA World Cup football match. After having a few drinks watching the football I ended up making a purchase that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have done. For the second year in a row I purchased a new camera on Black Friday, although this one couldn’t be much more different to the last.

I had intended to unbox the camera slowly, photographing the processing. However when it arrived I was just excited to get it into my hands, so the images are a tad more rushed than planned.

I made reference in my insta stories to my new camera being mint. Whilst this is a local colloquialism, it’s also a big clue as to the camera which I ordered.

Up until a couple of weeks ago I had never even heard of this camera brand. A visit to the National Glass Centre in Sunderland however resulted in a photo of my daughter being taken with one of the exhibits as part of an arts and crafts table on a Fuji Instax Square. Looking at the results I quickly developed a little obsession with wanting an instant film camera, only I didn’t want one which was a fully automatic point and shoot. I also wasn’t keen on the idea or having a digital camera attached to a printer, as so many instant film cameras actually seemed to be as I began to look into them. After a few hours on YouTube (more than I’d probably care to admit to) I’d discovered a few options for doing this. Some didn’t quite tick all the boxes, and some did, but involved buying expensive medium format cameras and frankensteining them with 3d printed instant film backs.

Enter Mint.

They produce purpose built cameras that use instant film with controllable aperture and/or shutter speed settings. I loved the look of their TLR camera, the Mint TL70. If that shot square film rather than instax mini I would have been all over that camera! The camera for me however was the Mint Instantkon RF70 (not that I’d write me off from buying a Mamiya in the future).

I opted for the pack which gave the leather neck strap, the ND filters and lens hood in addition to the camera itself, as per the image below. As you can see, this version shoots Instax Wide film. One thing not demonstrated in the image below is that if you buy a Mint Camera direct from Mint, you can earn free instant film by tagging them and using their hashtags on social media.

You have to upload 5 images/reels within 40 days and have all of them receive more than 60 likes each to qualify, and the photos have to have the camera in them, not simply be images taken using the camera. I am not sure how I would feel about posting this many images of the camera itself to my feed so I don’t know if I will take advantage of this regularly, but it is a very nice touch from the guys at Mint to make the film available to photographers for sharing to instagram, which a lot of people would probably do anyway.

The camera itself is has a fixed lens on retractable bellows. It altogether looks a little hipster-esque, which I admittedly quite like. The lens is a fixed 93mm prime, which although that sounds quite long for a lens on a camera of this type, you need to consider the size of the image being captured. It is closer to medium format, and as a result the lens is closer to a 40-50mm field of view.

The same needs to be considered when looking at the F value. Whilst its maximum aperture of F5.6 doesn’t feel like anything to write home about, this is closer to an equivalent depth of field to F2.4 on a full frame (as far as I can get as a best estimate from online research). This means that although it’s an F5.6 lens, it is probably capable of more bokehlicious images than my Fujifilm 35mm F2 lens that I will often use on hikes.

The below image shows the lens a little closer. The plastic with the horizontal lines just to the left of the glass is a button to release the brackets that hold the bellows to allow the lens to retract. When extending the bellows out on the Mint RF70 it is important to ensure both the top and bottom brackets are snapped into position, otherwise the plane of focus may be off. When retracting them it is important to ensure both pins that connect to the bracket are loosened before trying to close it or it may damage the camera over time.

One thing with the camera, which may show that this is a camera more for photographers who want to dabble in instant film rather than be for traditional instant film shooters, is that it has no autofocus system.

The camera features a fully manual rangefinder design. I had never shot on a rangefinder before using this camera for the first time, and I have actually found it suprisingly easy to adjust to using to get accurate focus in images. So far my shots have all been indoors with low light and have suffered more from children not sitting still enough and motion blur than actually missing focus. Most shots with the flash, even at F5.6, which research suggested is soft on this camera, have come out tack sharp for an instant film photo.

The above left image shows the focus lever with the thumb grip in front with white markings, and aperture dial behind with orange. One thing to note on the Mint RF70 is that you need to focus to infinity before you close the camera or it will not close.

The image on the right shows the back of the camera. The bottom square is a count of how many shots remain in the cartridge of film. The circle above is the range finder. This connects to two windows on the front that provide overlapping images inside. As you turn the focus level the images will seperate or start to align over the top of each other. When the image is seamless, this is when it is in focus.

Above this circle is light. At half press of the shutter this will show green if the exposure looks good, or red if it does not. If it is red and overexposed, the bottom square will show a value for the ND required if it is within the accompanying set.

The top window is probably my biggest gripe with the camera, although doing my research I was aware this would be going in. This is a window for composing your shot, decoupled from the rangefinder. This gives the advantage of having a brighter, and more clear view of the scene for composition. It isn’t however connected to the lens which means parallax distortion can effect framing.

On the Mint RF70, the closer you are to a subject the more your framing needs to be compensated to the lower right hand side of this window. I have mainly shot vertical images so far and have found this distortion to be worse than I expected than when comparing to what I’d seen online, although online demonstrations I’d seen were mainly in landscape. This is something which can be compensated for, and quickly adjusted to, it’s just a case of slowing down and thinking about the images more than I probably would through my mirrorless cameras EVFs.

The lever on the top right of the camera is a nice touch. This ejects your film. You can shoot multiple exposures on one image by not using the lever each time, or you can use it after every shot. It feels so satisfying to crank after you’ve taken an image, a nod to winding on film in a normal 35mm film camera.

To the front of this lever is the shutter speed dial. It has auto, auto+/-1 stop, and speeds from 1 second through to 1/500. It also has an option for a rear sync for the popup flash which is a nice touch to get creative with, especially as it’s approaching christmas time with fairy lights everywhere.

Maxing out at 1/500 is where the ND set will come into it’s own. The ISO speed of Instax is 800. Combining this with a wide aperture of F5.6 would be impractical during bright summer days without the option to add an ND filter to the glass. The ND mount is not threaded, but a propritry design by Mint, which means that unless you intend to try and 3D print your own alternate solution it may be worth the investment in the ND set. The included NDs include ND2, ND4 and ND8.

I am looking forward to combining the ND set at some point with Instax Wide Monochrome and attempting some moody long exposures on instant film, as that’s not something you will often get to see in this medium, especially where it has been taken on an actual film photo (you could for example use a digital camera and print to something like the Instax Link printers, Kodak Retro, or a Polaroid Lab)

Whilst there are auto options for exposure, I can very much see myself manually metering most shots to allow me to take full creative control of the images I am creating.

I have noticed a few quirks with the camera, even in the short time I’ve had it. The main one is the aforementioned window for composing. But I’ve also found that the back door doesn’t quite sit flush when it has film in it. I’ve not had any issues with leaks or anything like that, it just doesn’t seem to feel right. When ordering from Mint, you do get a 5 year warranty which is reassuring, although I am confident this is just a quirk and nothing to worry about.

There are certain quirks however that I saw written in reviews as negatives that I bought the camera to embrace. The camera being softer and having highlight blooms at F5.6 for example make it characterful. People very often put cheap diffusion filters onto very expensive and sharp lenses to soften and bloom them, I have two such filters myself for use with my Sony A7RIV, and if you read my blog how I edit my Fujifilm files in Lightroom, you may recall I run negative dehaze, clarity & texture on all my Fuji images. Again this demonstrates how I will be trying to lean into and embrace the character of this lens, rather than being limited by it, as it’s an effect I’m seeking already in my images.

Another limitation of the system I’ve often read is the lack of dynamic range on instant film. For me, this means it will be easier to try to create images with the look found in the ‘Tenebrism’ section of my website. Indeed the very first shots I took using the camera were dark, moody but very warm and retro portraits of my family that were very much in that style.

I will undoubtedly share some of the images I create here in future. I am expecting to create a mix of the Tenebrism style images, combined with some landscape shots if I occasionally replace my Fuji Xt3 with the Mint Intantkon RF70 for walks, especially if I can take a more intentional approach to playing with shape and light.

Whilst this has been a bit of an initial thoughts on the camera, an overview, I may come back and do a full review in a few months when I’m more used to the camera and it has been put through it’s paces in Northumberland and across North East England.

If you would like to see more of my landscape work, moving forward most of the images will be here in blog format, but I will notify of new entries on my Instagram page for landscapes - @photog.righ

If you are interested in following my portrait and product work, links to my instagram and twitter for those accounts are just below at the bottom of this page