Lomography

Lomography is also something that I am very interested in. It is defined as being a "new take on an old style of analogue photography". It takes its name from the Lomo L-CA, a camera produced during the Communist period in St Petersburg, Russia, although the design has been recently brought up by a Swiss company who have marketed it as a "fashion-camera" (sold in places such as Urban Outfitters and vintage camera shops).

It has had a bit of a resurge in the past few years, particularly the Diana camera which was originally produced in Hong Kong in the 60s and 70s as a toy camera, as its body was made entirely of plastic except for the lens. The flimsy nature of the plastic body and the sub-par lens meant that light often leaked in to the camera damaging the film, and producing a dream-like fuzzy image with little contrast.

The ten golden rules of lomography according to lomography.com are as follows:

1. Take your camera everywhere you go
2. Use it any time – day and night
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it
4. Try the shot from the hip
5. Approach the objects of your Lomographic desire as close as possible
6. Don't think (William Firebrace)
7. Be fast
8. You don't have to know beforehand what you captured on film
9. Afterwards either
10. Don't worry about any rules

These are a few photographs I took with my Diana F+, which takes 120 roll film letting you create panoramic shots and multiple exposures.  For more see my Flikr

The Diana is a great camera and extremely simple to use. It has two settings, automatic and a B setting, so that you can hold the shutter open for night time exposures. This is a great website for explaining all about Diana cameras and various items that you can get for them (such as an instant back, a 35mm back, flash, splitzer and clone cameras).

The Lomography.com shop charges about £45 for a Diana F+ as standard, and comes with an instruction manual, a book and a leaflet showing examples of shots taken in various different methods so all in all it is a very good value camera. 120 film is about £3-£4 a roll depending on where you buy it, Lomography produce their own film which i've yet to try, although I bought some 35mm lomography film a few days ago which was £7.99 for 3! They sell a lot of different types of film including red scale (which adds a red/yellow tint to the negative), and when you click on the type it shows a selection of photographs taken with it so you can see the results. The Lomography website is great although you can get second hand versions of a few of the items on ebay if you want to get them a little cheaper.

Developing the film is a little more difficult, 120 film is pretty hard to get developed unless you have a specialist shop nearby, although you can send off to get them done from a few different places. This site offers a few links to some places that develop film both in the UK and abroad, and also offers links to places where you can buy your own chemicals to develop your film yourself! I live in Liverpool and I go to a great place called MPS Imaging. They charge about £3.50 for dev only which is what I usually get as I have a negative scanner, but prints aren't much more. They have a full price list on their website.