FujiFilm Tiara II Film Waste: Why You're Losing Frames Every Roll
The 37th Frame - A Gem's Catastrophic Flaw
Not long ago, I wrote about how the Fujifilm Tiara is an underrated and undiscovered gem. The camera is sharp, auto-focus is reliable, the behavior of the camera is consistent once you get familiar with it. Outside of lacking exposure compensation it felt as if the camera had everything you could ask for.
But eventually, an oddity I noticed turned into more than a “huh, that’s weird” and is now one of the worst parts of the camera.
The camera can’t shoot more than 36 images per roll.
It’s not a deal breaker on its own necessarily but it’s something you need to consider if you can live with. The most frustrating part is that this issue stems from the camera’s headline feature, the drop-in loading system.
Let me explain a little more. The Fujiflm Tiara expects you to put the film canister into the camera with the film lead pulled out so the camera can automatically pull all the film into the body and feed the film back into the canister as you shoot.
It’s a clever design that helps the camera achieve its tiny profile. There’s no film winder to add bulk, your exposed film will live safe from light leaks in the canister and the camera feels automagical to use.
The Issue: What the Negatives Showed
The issue lies in the initial loading of the film into the Tiara when you first insert the canister of film into the camera. Once the Tiara grabs onto the film lead and starts to load the film you’ll see the film counter on the back screen start to increment, 1… 2… 3… the camera whirs as it pulls out the film, 35… 36… 37… 36…? That’s… weird? The camera seemingly finds enough film for 37 exposures, doesn’t it? Maybe there was a mistake. Maybe it loaded just shy of enough for 37 rolls so it goes back down to 36.
I naively thought like this for a bit. Then I realized that this behavior happens every. single. time. Film stocks that I could squeeze up to 38 rolls from could only get 36 in the Tiara. Eventually curiosity got the better of me and I took out my negatives. There it was:
There’s a large amount of the negative that goes unused. By letting the Tiara wind my film for me, I’m wasting film. Sometimes it looked like a large amount of film. But to make an entire article for it, maybe I’m overreacting right? Well, probably. But when this is your daily carry and you go through a roll or two a week, the issue starts to compound and add up.
Every roll of film you shoot, you lose at least one or two frames. By the time you shoot 36 rolls, you’ve paid for and developed an entire roll you never actually used. There may be shots that you can’t shoot because you've taken the 36th frame, need just one more and then the camera decides for you, “no, that’s enough,” and that's that.
Closing Thoughts
This discovery doesn’t take away from all the strengths of the camera. The FujiFilm Tiara really is a joy to use but this is a real factor to consider as film is too precious (and expensive) to be wasting. So for the time being, I’ll keep using the Tiara but I’ll be considering other options when they present themselves.