Ciao, digital. Hello, unpredictable art.

From SFGate.com comes this article about the 2010 International Juried Plastic Camera Show at Rayko Photo in Francisco.

"Old Oak," a black-and-white photo by Robert Holmgren of Menlo Park, won the 2010 International Juried Plastic Camera Show's Best of Show award.

Plastic cameras are cheap, prone to light leaks and unpredictable. Which is why a lot of photographers are drawn to them in the digital age of pixel counts, precision focus and Photoshop.

“You don’t know how the image is going to turn out when you shoot with a plastic camera. The unpredictability is a big part of the draw,” says San Francisco photographer Carlos Arietta, one of the many artists whose work is on view in the RayKo Photo Center’s 2010 International Juried Plastic Camera Show.

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Signpost

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.

Refreshing

This pic came off the first test roll from my Vivitar IC 100, a $1 plastic camera I picked up recently. It’s pretty standard looking. The insides could come from a LOMO Colorsplash or any number of unremarkable cameras. A simple lens, shutter speed and aperture fixed at 1/100th sec and f/5.6, and cheap enough to take anywhere (and not worry about it)…