The camera nerd.

Two in one night? The Lomo LC-A

I am spoiling you tonight a second review! I’ve had the LC-A a while now and been a tad guilty in not reviewing it. I got it refurbished off eBay there are some great deals to be had. I dont feel i’d benifit the extra features of the LC-A+ so i stuck with its older brother

How much did you pay: I paid £88 including delivery charges which i thought personally was amazing for the camera that started what has to be one of the best photo movements of all time in my opinion.

What did you get: 

• Lomo LC-A
• Manual
• Custom Snake skin finnish

When i received this camera it was love at first sight i saw the weather forecast for the next day wasn’t looking great so i loaded the camera with a roll of “Lomography Lady Grey” that id had in a box for a while and was saving for something special and i must say this camera is a treat i at no point had to refer to the manual or worry about how to work it. My first roll flew by i had a bit of a struggle when the camera started chewing the film on one of my frames but i reckon that was just user error. During the first roll i realised that there was a hot shoe on the camera so i started using it with a really cheap flash i had picked up for about £2 in a junk shop. The results (Pictured above) really made me smile the perfect amount of vingette and a dramatic sky.

I’d been told by a friend that using cross processing film in the LC-A was a waste of time so i kinda humoured him and loaded the camera with a roll of fuji c200 for my next roll through the camera, and i fell even deeper into this cameras clutches the colours were just beautiful down to some beautiful january sunlight. Absolutely no problems from this camera just set to auto mode and left to its own devices.

And this was it i finally could take temptation no longer. I loaded the camera with some lomo slide film with no intention of the film seing e5 chemistry, i took the camera on a trip home to glasgow and just took it round town playing with it and shooting away and i’m not disappointed, the film and the camera compliment each other beautifully. I will defiantly be using this combination again.

To sum up i can see after just three rolls with this camera how this camera started the lomography movement, it is a beautiful camera its simplicity still astounds me to this day, the option of being able to pick aperture if you feel the need and its beautiful lens have won me over and unfortunately for my Olympus XA2 this camera has won its space in my pocket for the foreseeable future.

There is only one place i have yet to take this camera the studio… and thats coming stay tuned!

OMG He finally reviews the harman titan!

So on the 9th of september i announced i had purchased this camera and would do a review… well here it is!

Price paid: I paid £189.50

What did you get? 

• The camera itself with the basic pinhole with a focal length of 72mm 
• 1 x Fidelity Double Darkslide 
• 1 x 10 sheets of Ilford Delta 100
• 1 x 10 sheets of Ilford Multigrade Paper
• 1 x 10 sheets of 4x5” Harman Direct Positive 
• 1 x Exposure Calculator

 Blackpool zoo

Testing the Olympus XA2…

Before i get started i would like to point out this is by no means my finest test roll but i fell i can talk about the camera.

Price paid: I paid £4 for the camera flash from the Salvation Army charity store in aberdeen and it came loaded with all the correct batteries, there was still a 36 exposure film in aswel i assumed however the shop will have ruined the roll when opening it so no point in developing. so i dug the bottom of the bag and started a test roll (Agfa vista 200). I also got a small pouch for the camera being in my rucksack. I only really bought this camera down to the buzz i’d been hearing through certain lomographers ect PDExposures featured the XA series on his vlog so at £4 i decided i may as well give it a shot.

Using the camera: I must say it is very rare i get exited holding a compact camera and the olympus XA2 exites me when ever i hold this small beauty i want to be taking a picture so in that sense it is a fantastic camera to use. It is easy to load and fully auto besides exposure which minimalises how much you think i can see why this is a camera of choice for many a lomographer, However i personally find that with the camera being so simple i often forget to change the zone focus like i do when using holgas or dianas etc… My only other gripe when using this camera is if you are quite clumbsy (Like myself) You can feel a bit irritated when trying to change the ISO settings.

i find the camera can have a slight tendency to overexpose an image but this may sound crazy as i dont necessarily think with this camera it’s a bad thing the results always end up fairly dreamy and lomo esque results.

In conclusion i’d say that this camera defiantly has its place as my carry everywhere camera it was so cheap i dont really need to worry about it it is extremely simple to use and when i start to remember to set my focus dial correctly i’ll get some amazing results from it. I was going to buy a Lomo LCA+ but now i have this badboy in my pocket i don’t really feel the need.

Mamiya 645 Super

Before we hit the ground running on this one i was genuinely surprised that i haven’t featured this camera so here we go!

Price Paid: £400 and i received the camera itself a 120mm back an 80mm f/2.8 lens a waist level finder and a prism view. I also received a fistful of fresh dated film. the camera is perfect the insides are immaculate. And yet the technician at my college is still convinced i was ripped off by said deal. it’d be interesting to find out if i was but that shall wait for another time.

What the hell possessed you to buy such a camera? To be perfectly honest i’m not sure what hooked me into medium format slr’s but ever since i had started my  course at the city of glasgow college i was fascinated by the range of medium format slrs they had  Including bronica i posted a picture of in the studio a few weeks back, they have a pentax 6x7 they have a beast of a mamiya rb 67 then they have a lonely little 645 that nobody ever mentions or speaks about i only found out about it as it was on their checklist of gear available for rent. so having tried all of the opposition and looked at all the results i could achieve online i already knew the pentax and mamiya rb were just to big for me i wanted to take the camera everywhere and that wasn’t happening. I wasn’t keen on the bronica either. I took the sad little mamiya out of the store room and ran a roll through it, now at this point it’s worth saying i buggered up the development so i have no idea if the pictures were usable or not, however i fell in love with this little camera it’s stylings and the way it worked so that leads us onto our next stage.

Finding my own: Lets just say i was pleasently suprised by how easy it was to find my own  to an extent it was a 12 minute walk from the building i tried the camera in to the closest camera store with one in stock map pictured below after ebay shopping ect for so long i realised i’d be better to go with Merchant City Cameras who gave me said deal above with a 6 month warranty.

Using the camera: Using this camera is an absoloute treat i’d use this camera every minute of the day if i could I’ve shot alot of film on this camera but i still have alot to process then find a way of getting it scanned, i was previously using my colleges imacon flextight and the results are beautiful the shot from above was from my first roll of ilford fp4+ however the shot was a tad grainy for my liking i know think i was over agitating my Film during development. I’d show more images but i have yet to find reliable results or afford my own flat bed scanner. I have previously ran film through jessops and as well as getting overcharged my entire film was destroyed by their machine, they didnt tell me and i noticed when i went home. Once i find a method of scanning which isn’t photographing my negatives i will upload them in their own little blog.

Thankyou for reading this blog entry my next post will be about the 35mm back i bought for this camera!