lomography
More Instant Photography Goodness!
Diana Instant Back
Who said instant photography was a dying art form? Pish and nonsense – I say! More good news from the lovely (and ever so slightly wacky) people over at lomography.com: they have just released a new Instant Back for the perfectly-formed plastic medium format (and not at all dirty) Diana camera! And what’s more, it uses Fuji Instax Mini film – which (as we have mentioned in previous posts, when we’ve been pushing the delights of Fuji Instax photography) is still being produced (and Fuji show no signs of losing faith in the format).
You can pick up a Diana starter kit + instant back (and two films) for £117.25 (or 125 euros) now from lomography.com. And if you already have a Diana camera, you can pick up the back separately for around £75.
Visit their Diana microsite for more information: www.lomography.com/diana/
CameraFile: LC-A+
Lomo LC-A+ (and cool Lomo packaging)
Camera Model: LC-A+
Manufacturer: LOMO
Format: 35mm film
Type: Zone-Focus Compact
Price: £240 (from the official Lomography shop) (or £268 for a Russian Lens version)
Reasons to Buy: The LC-A (or Lomo Kompakt Automat to give it the original full title) is the classic and ultimate Lomography camera. This unassuming Russian camera spawned and inspired the entire Lomographic cult in the early 1990s (when it was rediscovered by a bunch of Viennese students in a second-hand camera store in Prague) – and even supplied it the name. Refurbished LC-A cameras are still available for around £90 to £150 (check on eBay), but the brand new LC-A+ is a perfect modern re-creation with one or two improvements.
Shots produced by the LC-A possess the trademark vignetting – with awesome clarity in the centre of shot (thanks to the legendary Minitar 1″ lens), trailing off to differing degrees of blurredness at the edges. In sunlight with a low ISO film the colours captured are bright and striking, and even more so when shooting on E6 (slide) film cross-processed as C41. › Continue reading
CameraFile: SuperSampler (AS3.0)
SuperSampler (in blue rubber finish, phwoar...)
Camera Model: SuperSampler (AS3.0)
Manufacturer: lomography.com
Format: 35mm film
Type: Multi-Lens Compact (No Focus)
Price: £47.85 (from official Lomography Shop) / £25 (from Amazon marketplace seller)
Reasons to Buy: A truly unique multi-lens camera, with four panoramic 20mm plastic lenses arranged in a row which (when the shutter is pressed) fire in sequence capturing four concurrent images on a single 35mm frame over a period of 2 seconds (one every 0.5 seconds), or 0.2 seconds (one every 0.05 seconds, in high speed mode). The results are instantly recognisable and incredibly cool.
It doesn’t use batteries, just pull the ripcord before each shot and let the wonders of clockwork (or whatever secret black art it is that provides the SuperSampling power) do its magic!
There are a minimum number of controls on the camera. Aside from the ripcord and the shutter release, there’s a switch to change between high speed and normal mode, another small switch to open the back panel in order to load/remove film. A film rewind button (which needs to be depressed while manually rewinding the film)… and that’s about it. There isn’t even a viewfinder to worry about (well, strictly speaking a small rubber rectangle is provided which slots onto the side of the camera and is supposed to be used as a ‘viewfinder’ – but I recommend you just leave this in the box. This is a fun camera which you should just randomly point at things, without worrying about composition!). › Continue reading
Is Film the Future of Photography?
You could be forgiven for thinking that film-based photography has been dying a slow death since the introduction of digital cameras. Film processing stores are closing down left, right and centre. Film and camera companies are winding down their film-based operations, to concentrate on digital. Even the majority of professional photographers now place their livelihoods firmly in the lap of digital technology. So film is dead, right?
Lomo LC-A+ shot (P.Broome)
Well, you could look at it that way. Or you can look at it the way that I do – which is that film-based photography is currently in the strongest position it has been in for nigh on a decade, and I feel quite confident that film is assured of a continuing place in the future of photography.
But how so? Why bother with film? Surely it’s just an outdated, unpredictable way of taking photos? You’d think so, and in a way you’d be right. But it is film that has single-handedly managed to reinject the fun and adventure back into photography. This is largely down to the Lomography movement which has swept the world over the last few years – a bunch of funky individuals who fell in love with cheap Eastern European and Asian film cameras and the idiosyncratic results they produced, who got together with like-minded others and resolved to shoot any thing, any time.
It’s really hard to shoot spontaneously on a digital camera – without reviewing and judging the results instantly. I mean, digital photography is great, it gives us quality results that we can rely on – but because of that it’s a safe option. And safe is… dull. Once a shot is committed to film, there’s no deleting it and replacing it with another attempt – that first shot is going to come back to you in that envelope with all of the other shots, whether you like it or not. You can still post process your finished scanned image in Photoshop, but you can never alter what is on that original negative. The image you captured in the camera is eternal. › Continue reading
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