Fujifilm’s Retro Instax 41 Camera Imagines Life Beyond Instagram

If Instagram has got you down as much as it has me down (I can’t even find friends’ photos anymore amid the deluge of AI-narrated spam posts and “suggested for you” nonsense), Fujifilm may have the antidote you needed. The company’s new Instax Mini 41 is a tightly-packed point-and-shoot instant camera for capturing the moment and handing off photographic keepsakes, which may mean you won’t have to ask your friends if they’ve given up their Insta account yet.

The Instax Mini 41 is a sequel to 2021’s Instax Mini 40 (which didn’t actually launch until 2022) but in a redesigned plastic shell that still sports the large flash and 60 mm lens. The big improvement this go around is the introduction of automatic exposure, which will adjust the sensor for the light levels when you press down on the shutter button. Fujifilm claims this will result in less blown-out photos when snapping in bright spaces like the great outdoors. The new design also adds parallax correction found in the Instax Mini 12, which should automatically improves focus clarity when centering the frame on your friends’ mug.

The camera is also relatively light despite looking like a literal tin can. It weighs in at 12.2 oz (without the two AA batteries) or a little less than a pound. The shell itself is 4.8 by 4 by 2.4 inches, which should be relatively comfortable for most hands. The camera spits out 86 mm by 54 mm “credit card sized” Instax mini film, which you have to buy separately for around $21 for a pack of 20.

It really is more of what you’ve come to expect from Instax cameras. Its lens has a wide angle view equivalent to a 35mm and only two manual focus zones for both up-close or slightly further away. There’s no separate button for flash control. If you want more of those features, you’d have to aim for last year’s $200 Instax Mini 99, which also has a mid-range zoom.

The best word I could use to describe Fujifilm’s new instant camera is “cute,” though it’s not as “cutesy” as the Instax Mini 12. Its rounded corners and gunmetal gray body are less like a bullet and more like a vintage hip flask your grandfather still keeps close in his pocket (okay maybe it’s as thick as two hip flasks). This is the kind of camera an Instagrammer would have once loved. Now its the one the rest of us can use to smugly ask “oh you’re still using digital?”

Fujifilm’s latest camera should (hopefully) be available sometime at the end of April, though as of Tuesday morning the product page isn’t yet available in the U.S. We reached out to Fujifilm to ask about pricing and we’ll update this post if we hear back. The camera is going for 95 pounds in the U.K., so we would normally expect it to hit a similar $100 MSRP in the U.S., although with tariffs on the horizon Fuji’s latest instant camera may get more expensive.