So… That NONS Hasselblad Instax Square Back…

This post was started for a completely different reason than where it ended up.

Hamish Gill and his accomplices are at it again.

Minding my own business and then a few days ago a post about the NONS Instax back for Hasselblad post shows up. Read the article and at first, I did not fully get it.

A very nice concept, but at $279 ($259 pre-order) it costs more than a full blown Instax Square camera from Fuji. So get that, right?

This is where I should have walked away.

But, no. I got the bright idea to write a “So…” post about it. These are posts where I share my personal opinion about products that do not appear to be up my alley. “Great products for some, but not for me.” posts. This requires research because I wanted to make a decent case for my stance. Well, that backfired spectacularly.

This is specific to selecting an Instax square solution. In no particular order here are the things that swayed me.

• Fuji cameras.
  • The aperture spec for the Instax Square cameras is f/12.6… Eesh. Really?
  • Zone focus. Fine. Two zones? Eesh.
• Mint option.
  • While it is a looker and the ability to focus properly was intriguing, $899 for a lens that tops out at f/5.6 is a no from me.
• Non… NONS Hasselblad back option. Vinstax.
  • Quite a bit more expensive ($799) and requires a viewfinder adapter and a filter according to a review I watched and the tutorial video from posted by Vinstax.
  • I am usually a big fan of rangefinder focusing but two viewfinders, one to focus and one to frame, is a hard sell compared to WYSIWYG focusing in this case.
  • Still an impressive engineering feat but the ability to use the NONS solution without adapters combined with the lower cost is hard to ignore.
• Old time Polaroid backs.
  • Made for old time large format Polaroid film that covers a much larger surface area. There are great videos that all caused me to glaze over (Another good one here.) before I reached the end because… while the videos themselves are great, I am not doing all of that. I much prefer a film surface area that better matches the 6×6 image surface and is still in production.
• NONS full Instax Square camera kits.
  • While less than the Mint variant above and, thanks to using interchangeable lenses, having access to much faster glass I find the 1/250s top shutter speed a bit problematic with ISO 800 film.
• NONS Instax Square Hasselblad back.
  • After researching everything above $279 starts to sound reasonable with one big assumption. That you already have a Hasselblad camera. You could easily spend far more for a native Hasselblad film back. But if you do not have a compatible Hasselblad V camera body, none of this makes any sense and I would likely go with the Fuji cameras or the NONS SL660 depending on my budget.
  • After saying all of that everything I needed to sell me was contained in one video.
    • Instax square nicely matches matches the 6×6 surface area.
    • Focus seems accurate.
    • I like the rechargeable battery and digital counter readout.
    • Comes with a dark slide.
    • No adapters are needed for the viewfinder or lens.
    • Shoot as you would any other film.

With that, I pre-ordered one…

That is all I have got to say for myself right now. Says they ship in October and I will report back then. Until then…

Happy capturing.

-ELW