Olympus Mju (Stylus). I always wanted one!
I picked up an Olympus Mju (Stylus) today, for the unheard-of price of $3.99. Several years ago, most people needing a compact camera bought point-and-shoot cameras with long, soft, slow zoom lenses.
Act Like You Know. Mystery plastic camera, 99 cent store ISO 200 film.
Another WTF moment walking around San Francisco. Sutro Tower, Magnum, the Bay bridge and Abe Lincoln FTW!
Tableau, LOMO LC-A+. Expired Fuji Superial Reala 100 film.
This roll of film sat in my freezer for several years before being shot in my LOMO LC-A+ last year, then it sat in the bottom of my 6 Million Dollar bag
Signpost. Mystery toy camera, expired fuji superia reala 100 film.
Recently, I’ve been shot most of my street candids portrait-style. I don’t know where this is coming from, maybe I should buy a square-frame medium format camera to cure myself of this? Or am I just looking for an excuse to buy a Holga, Diana or a Lubitel?
Does anyone have a favorite, obscure medium format toy camera I don’t know about? Let me know.
I took this picture with a Aiptek Pencam SD, a camera I liken to the Digital Harinezumi. The Pencam SD is roughly the same size, and does 1280×960 max resolution (still), and 6-8 frames per second at 640×480. Like the Digital Harinezumi, the Pencam SD has 64MB of built-in memory and an SD card slot. Instead of an expensive CR2 battery, the Pencam SD uses AAA batteries – I have a stack of rechargeable AAAs at home.
Unlike the DH, the Aiptek is less than $20.
Is this a “Digital Holga”? Probably not, while it can vignette, it can take impressively sharp pictures in the right light.
Is the viewfinder a best guesstimate of the image area? Definitely.
Is it fun to shoot with? Extremely – I prefer not being able to see the photo until after I get home.
Being able to record sound with the Digital Harinezumi 2 would be interesting, but I really like the effects people have created by adding soundtracks to silent video created with the original Digital Harinezumi.
FUZZYEYEBALLS wrote about the “Fun Nature FDC01”, a new toy digital camera. While other camera manufacturers have been beating each other to market with higher megapixel sensors and features, the FDC01 stands apart. It’s a 1.9 megapixel camera with 64 MB on-board memory, SD expansion slot, rechargeable battery, 8 fps “movie” mode, and 3 photo effects. What it doesn’t have is a viewfinder, flash or display!
I’ve known Sarah Zucker for some time through her photography online. her essay, On Lomography echoes many of the sentiments regarding “Lomography” that I’ve been feeling.
Other “Lomographers” inspired me to begin capturing intimate and mundane moments in my life on film. I shared my photos on lomo.org and lomo.us, two online bulletin boards, and shared visions with other lomographers. We started an occasional tradition of “LOMOCrawls”, photo get-togethers open to anyone with a creative eye and any sort of camera.
I think if you are going to make a fetish over camera equipment, it should be junk store cameras, not DSLRs. There’s something about a fifty year old scratched up plastic lens that makes magic happen. The proof is on exhibit at JunkStoreCameras.com.
Marcy Merrill, a professional photographer, has been accumulating cameras at swap meets and thrift stores and running rolls of film though them to see what comes out. She has captured some remarkably atmospheric images and each one is accompanied by a photo of the two dollar plastic camera that took it. Check it out…
[ Marcy Merrill’s Junk Store Cameras via boing boing ]
Update… Gizmodo picked this up, too. You go, Marcy!
This DIY Kodachrome machine (the “Filminator”) was created to produce more film stock after the company discontinued productions. Michael, the creator, notes, “Plastic and goop go in one end, and camera film comes out the other end. This is not a trivial undertaking.”
[ DIY film via boingboing ]
I went out shooting with a Vivitar PN2011, a 35mm panoramic plastic camera. This is probably my favorite plastic camera to date, but I don’t know why. I think it’s big enough, the lens is wide enough, it feels sturdy enough and it’s got a lens cover to protect that $1.00 piece of plastic. They’re cheap and plentiful, too.
Chromatic aberration? Pincushin distortion? Vignetting? Must be a Jazz Jelly!
Shot with generic 200 ISO $.99 store film.
More plastic fun with a Bell and Howell $1.99 junk store camera.
Lomography is… from Sofya Suhova on Vimeo.
Here’s a wonderful bit of advice for aspiring photographers from Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai at PhotoDino.
What Every Aspiring Photographer Should Know
These are my thoughts, nothing more and nothing less.
I get asked all the time, during workshops, in e-mails, in private messages, what words of wisdom I would give to a new and aspiring photographer. Here’s my answer.
Another forgotten photo – not quite sure where this was.
@lomography has been all (ahem…) atwitter about a mystery camera announcement this week. The folks at Tongue in Chic seem to have blown the lid off of the announcement of the Diana Mini, a half-frame/full-frame 35mm version of the cult classic Diana plastic camera.
Miroslav Tichy is a reclusive artist who has resided in his hometown of Kyjov, Czech Republic, for most of his life. Born in 1926, he was a painter until the late 1960s, when he started taking photos, mostly of local women sunbathing, using equipment that he built himself. The cameras are made of cardboard, bottle caps, and rubber bands. Tichy mounts his photos in his own handmade frames and enhances them with pencil markings wherever he sees fit.
I’m a big fan of the Sunny 16 Rule for determining exposure. Print film is forgiving enough that you don’t always have to get the exposure *exactly* right to get a good shot.
The”Sunny 16″ rule, paraphrased, says, “Set the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the film speed, and set the aperture to f/4 for open shade, f/5.6 for overcast, f/8 for hazy sunlight, f/11 for sunlight and f/16 for snow, water, or bright surfaces in sunlight.
Here’s a great link to a do-it-yourself paper slider exposure meter. Use one of these and you won’t need a meter for 90% of your outdoor shots on print film.
Shooting an old retro camera without a meter and guesstimating exposure is a liberating experience. I recommend it.
More LOMO + generic film goodness, and the lens correction filter in Photoshop CS2 to fix a bit of perspective shift.
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