Colour Your Life - With Real Colour

Does it ever seem as if your entire existence is played out in shades of black, grey, and white? And that you find it unsatisfactory? This is not a dig at the people who are restricted by various degrees of colour vision deficiency. They live cheerfully, and I wish them well. They may even have an advantage over me in certain circumstances. What I am decrying is increasing emphasis in design for the boring choices; black, white, and grey. I recognise the elegance of it in some cases, but long for a spike of some other colour to brighten things. In fact I think I need a boost right now... Ah, that's better. I always keep a Ford hot rod handy in case of sadness. But back to camera colours...The topic is the Fujifilm Instax Mini 70. You'll have seen a recent advertisement in the newspaper for these cameras showing a number of the colours available. Purple, yellow, blue, pink. A glorious selection. No matter which part of the spectrum you naturally favour, you can find a camera to suit. And you can have the black and white, if you wish. The Fujifilm people do play with you to some extent - look at the inner box that the camera comes in...It couldn't be greyer or plainer if Le Corbusier had drawn it. If he were still alive I daresay someone in France would be living in a Fujifilm box right now. But deeper in is the gold. And in this case it really is gold. The basic camera idea is familiar by now to most of us - a 10-shot instant pack of film is dropped into the back and then every time the user shoots a picture, a blank is ejected from the top of the camera. 90-120 seconds later, it has developed into a full-colour print. It needs no coating or special handling - it is ready for sharing right away. The controls at the back of the camera are of the simplest type - on/off, self timer, and selfie mode. You can ask for the in-built flash or not. You can fasten it to a tripod or selfie stick with a 1/4" scrw socket at the bottom. It runs on two batteries ( uincluded in the box ) and the Instax Mini film is available in pretty near every tourist place. But here is the best saved for last. As the camera is an odd little shape, it is convenient to carry it in a small pouch. And you need not restrict yourself in selecting that pouch. I grabbed the yellow/blue Art Deco one from the storeroom, but there are plenty more in different colours made for this camera. If you drive a grey, black, or white car - if you furnish your house in grey, black, or white - if you wear only these colours...this is your chance to add some of the colours of the sunset*, or flowers, or great paintings to your palette. Go-on...treat yourself.

• If you still fancy grey sunsets I can recommend Aberystwyth in Wales...