Out and about with the Diana Instant Square Camera

Back in July 2018 I decided to back the Diana Instant Square Camera by Lomography on Kickstarter.

At the point of backing this project, I already owned my Leica Sofort and absolutely love instant photography but also wanted an instant camera with a larger photo size too.

It seemed like a fun instant camera I could do some exciting photos with. I also liked the fact it was fujifilm since that tends to develop more quickly than the current Polaroid film.

At the point of backing this project I didn’t own a Polaroid camera. At the time, my dream instant camera that I wanted to own was the SX-70 Alpha 1 but it was quite an expensive camera to buy so I felt the Instant Diana on Kickstarter was more affordable.

I backed the camera and opted for the Adriano edition instead of the standard Diana design and the flash along with some gel filters.

Not long after backing, I kept getting more offers and deals from Lomography on the accessories which, were a really good price that I could add to the current package. I viewed this camera as a fun arty instant camera. I therefore ended up getting the full works as follows:

• Diana Instant Square Special Edition Camera
• Diana F+ Special Edition Flash
• Diana Flash Color Gel Filters
• Diana Instant Square Flash Plug
• Diana F+ Flash Hotshoe Plug
• Diana F+ Flash to Hotshoe Adapter
• Diana+ 20mm Fisheye Lens
• Diana+ 38mm Super Wide Lens
• Diana+ 55mm Wide Angle & Close Up Lenses
• Diana+ 110mm Telephoto Lens
• Diana+ 75mm Glass Lens

The kickstarter project was a success and was fully backed which meant that I would receive the finished camera around January 2019.

In the meantime, I came across some Pink and Black Duochrome Polaroid 600 film which I loved the look of and ended up buying a cheap Polaroid 600 camera on ebay (which I blogged about in 2018).

For all Polaroid’s film faults, I still really liked the size of the film and in the end was able to save up enough money to upgrade to the SX-70 Alpha 1 which was the model I’d really wanted.

I purchased the SX-70 in September 2018 and now wonder if I had purchased this earlier on, if I would have even backed the Kickstarter project?

Fastforward to January 2019 and my Diana Instant Camera (and all the accessories) arrived.

When I opened the package I was completely overwhelmed by all the components I had added onto the intial package and quite frankly, I didn’t know where to begin!

I briefly looked through everything but I was very disappointed by the camera design itself. I stupidly hadn’t realised just how large it would be and I had been spoiled for the past few months using a gorgeous, well made SX-70 and also my Leica Sofort which are both stylish and cool looking in their own right.

The Diana Instant Camera in comparison looked like a cheap child’s toy (which I suppose is the point of the Diana camera’s) and once I added on the very large flash, you should have seen my husband’s face! In fact, I should have taken an instant photo!

He looked quite alarmed at my purchase and thought the design was horrible in comparison to my other two instant cameras.

I initially wondered if I should just sell it on but I really wanted to experiment with this camera and see what it could do with the various accessories.

I took the camera down to my boat and left it there with every intention of using it through the spring and summer of last year.

However, everytime, I went to use it around people, I suppose I just felt embarrassed by it. It really did feel like a toy and it’s certainly not subtle! In the end I just kept using my other two instant cameras.

However, I still really want to try out the accessories and I do like the instax square instant photos.

Last weekend, I finally brought the camera back home from my boat and have decided I’m going to use it for some of my daily walks, like I normally do with my Leica Sofort.

I’m going to make a journal of the photos taken using the different accessories and rather than be overwhelmed and try and use everything at once, I’m going to make a plan and use one accessory at a time and finally see what photos I can make using these accessories.

I then plan to blog about each accessory seperately and will give my views on what I thought and sample photos.

I started this week and decided to try out the 75mm glass lens. However, I didn’t have a great start. The film got jammed in the camera when trying to release the camera sheet so I removed the film and some plastic broke off and fell out but thankfully it was from the film packet and not the actual camera!

I re-inserted the film but it was damaged with light exposure.

I had some more film so put that in the camera and initially thought I had broke the camera as the photos were coming out blank still (very frustrating!).

I then realised there was an exposure button underneath the lens and I had it on Pinhole mode and it needed to go down to f/11. Once I did this I managed to get the following photos:

I also must have accidentally hit the double exposure switch on the side instead of just the on switch and I got this trippy shot of my dog:

I thought the pictures came out quite well using the glass lens.

I also feel more comfortable carrying the camera over my shoulder like a handbag rather than round my neck as I really do look a bit strange because it is quite big and toy like. It’s more subtle when carried to the side.

Here are the camera specifications:

Cable Release Connection	No
Battery Type	4 x AAA
Available Apertures	Manual settings, cloudy (f/11), partly sunny (f/19), sunny (f/32), pinhole (f/150)
Shutter Speeds	N (1/100), B (Bulb Mode, Unlimited)
Focal Length	75 mm (Kit Lens, 38 mm equivalent)
Film advance	Automatic
Film Format	Fujifilm Instax Square
Flash connection	Diana Flash plug & Hotshoe adapter
Focusing	Zone Focusing
Focusing Distance	1-2 m / 2-4 m / 4 m-infinity
Frame Counter	Auto Frame Counter
Material	Plastic
Tripod Mount	Yes
Lightmeter	No
View Finder	Reverse Galilean, detachable

Lastly, I forgot to mention the viewfinder….you have different ones for different lenses and they are another large piece that stands out on the camera so again, another thing that really isn’t subtle.

If you want some funny looks, then wear this camera around your neck! Otherwise, you may want to consider what other instant cameras are out there.

If I had paid full price, I don’t think I would have purchased this camera. I really did get caught up in all the hype of the Kickstarter project and it’s a lesson learnt that I will try and never repeat again.

On the plus side, I’m really going to try it out over the next few months and see if this camera grows on me since I’ve not really given it a chance.

I’m hoping I will get some cool effects from it that I perhaps could never achieve with my other two instant camera’s so we shall see.

I look forward to updating you all in my little adventure with the Diana Instant Camera.

Double Exposures with my Lomography Sprocket Rocket Camera in Kuala Lumpur

Back in September I visited Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for the day along with my husband and a couple of friends.

I knew my husband would be taking lots of bulk standard photos during our visit there with a digital camera so I decided to mix it up a bit and load up my Sprocket Rocket Camera with some LomoChrome Purple 400 35mm film.

I’d figured that whilst visiting I would be taking a lot of landscape shots, which the Sprocket Rocket Camera is great for since it’s panoramic and as mentioned in previous blog posts, I love the sprocket hole effect.

Unfortunately on the day I visited, the weather was really bad and constantly rained. This meant I didn’t manage to take as many photos as I had originally planned.

Also the frame counter on my camera didn’t seem to be working properly and I’m still not sure whether this was me not loading the film correctly or if the film had got slightly jammed or due to the torrential rain, in my haste to try and take photos quickly, I just wasn’t using it correctly.

Either way, since the frame seemed to remain constantly around the 3 mark and didn’t seem to count upwards beyond that number, I knew that I would most likely end up with multiple exposures which is exactly what happened.

It transpired after developing the film that several of the photos I’d taken ended up being multiple exposures and here they are:

Here are a couple of shots that I must have managed to move the film on correctly so they didn’t end up as a multiple exposure:

Trying to take photos or do some sightseeing in bad rain was certainly not a pleasant experience and although I didn’t manage to take as many photos as I had hoped, I’m pleased I at least managed to take a couple.

 

International Film Swap

Through my blog  I was recently contacted by International Film Swap Group and asked if I would like to join in taking pictures on a roll of film, then posting it to somebody in their community in a another part of the world who would reshoot the film and get the film processed to create some cross country double exposures.

I was really interested to see what effects the photos would have if I did this via their group so I immediately agreed.

After agreeing, I was contacted via email from one of their member’s called Mathias who is based in Stockholm, Sweden. His instagram page is @haexes if you’d like to check out his work.

He suggested that I shoot a colour roll of 35mm film that I would then post to him and he would flip the roll and re-shoot it to produce a red scale fusion effect.

I had never heard of flipping a roll of film before to create this effect so again, I found this really interesting and was really looking forward to seeing the results.

After some further discussion with Mathias on what type of colour film would work  for the red scale effect, I decided to use Fujifilm X-TRA Superia 400 35mm film.

I shot the film using my Pentax K1000 camera as I knew this particular camera would allow me to shoot the film at ISO 800. I had wanted to double the ISO from the original 400 since the film was going to be double exposed.

Mathias used his Olympus Trip 35 camera for the re-shooting of the film.

We had both agreed from the beginning that I was not going to give particular details of each shot I had taken as we wanted the finished photos to be more free style. Instead, I gave Mathias a brief overview of where I had taken my shots which I confirmed were of Brighton Beach and some other sites nearby such as the West Pier, a statue and the I360 along with a couple of flower shots to create a bit of a mixture.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when Mathias developed and scanned the film except I knew it would probably look quite creative and very lomography-esq since part of the exposure would be of a red scale type of photo which would create a fire effect.

Today I received the scanned photos from Mathias and I was really impressed with the images we had managed to combine on the film.

Here are a few of my favourite images we took:

We’ve decided to do a further film swap together, this time using black and white film. Mathias will be shooting the film first then he will pass it onto me to re-shoot and I will get the film developed and scanned.

I’d be interested to know what other people’s opinions are of the double exposures. Do you like them? or is it something you wouldn’t want to do in your own photography?

If anybody reading this blog post is interested in doing a film swap with me, please contact me as it really is great fun to do.

Sprocket Rocket Panorama Camera

As a newbie to film photography this year (please see the first blog I wrote for more information on this), I’ve only recently discovered the Lomography company and the ‘toy camera’s’ they do so have been buying and trying them as you can pick some of them up quite cheaply (either never used or hardly used second hand).

I had seen photos on Flickr and Instagram that had sprocket holes on them which I think looked really cool. I knew that some of the sprocket hole effects were achieved by just scanning the whole negative but I was fascinated by how some of them had the whole picture over the sprocket hole.

Once I had discovered the Lomography company I found that they produced a camera called the Sprocket Rocket Panorama Camera which has been specially developed to take pictures with the sprocket holes on them.

As with most of the Lomography camera’s they are very lightweight because they are made out of plastic.

It has a 30mm lens and produces a standard image size of 72 x 33mm (panoramic images including sprocket holes).  There is an optional frame insert that can be put into the camera that produce 72 x 24mm (”ordinary” panoramic images) but personally I think that defeats the whole object of this camera as I would want the sprocket holes to be shown.

The focusing on the camera is 0.6m to infinity which you focus on front of the lens by estimating how far you are standing away from the image you want to take since the viewfinder isn’t linked to the lens. There are 2 x shutter speeds (1/100, Bulb). There are 2 x aperture options (f/10.8, f/16). It takes 35mm film and is best suited to an ISO speed of 400. Another feature that I really love about the camera is that it has a white dot film stopping mechanism to enable you to take multiple exposures.

I initially was hoping to find a second hand one of these cameras as they retail at £69 for the black one and £79 if you wanted a different colour one. Thankfully I actually prefer the black colour.

Whilst looking for a second hand one, I found that not many of them seem to come up for sale like some of the other Lomography cameras and when I recently found a second hand used one for sale without its original box or instruction pamphlets, it ended up selling on eBay  in a bid only auction for over £50 (not including postage). I decided at that point that I’d sooner just pay the full retail price and buy a brand new one directly from the Lomography shop.

Thankfully at the time on deciding this I was actually going to London for the day for a Lomography workshop (blog to follow about this) so I was able to find some time to pop into the Lomography shop in Soho and buy one.

I was also lucky enough to buy the last few rolls the shop had of the LomoChrome Purple film as I wanted to see how this would look on the camera.

Once I took a closer look at the camera when I got it home, I discovered that it’s design was based on the vintage Dick Tracy Camera of the Seymore Products Co in Chicago circa 1947 combined with Lomography’s own design.

I loved how simple it was to load the 35mm film and the fact that it really does encourage multiple exposures as it has a simple operating system of 2 x winding knobs at each end of the camera at the top for moving the film forward and backwards. The white dot stopping mechanism window at the top of the camera enables you to see if you’ve wound on the film to the right spot so multiple exposures match on the same frame.

This camera also does the opposite of the half frame camera in the fact that if you have a 36 exposure 35mm film, you will only get 18 super-wide angle shots on this camera so this means in the long run you would use a lot more film.

On the bottom of the camera is a tripod strap screw which can be removed to enable you to place the camera on a tripod to take long exposed shots in bulb mode.

The shutter button is actually on the side of the lens rather than on the top of the camera and you have to be careful when the camera is in your bag etc not to accidentally knock the shutter button as you could take an unwanted photo!

There is a plastic lens cap included with this camera which you have to remember to move because the viewfinder is not linked to the lens so you could end up happily snapping away and find all your pictures come out black.

The aperture lever is underneath the lens and you can move it to the ‘sunny’ (f/16) or ‘cloudy’ (f/10.8) option.

My first impression of this camera is that it felt cheap and plastic and I wondered how the price could be justified for something that quite frankly didn’t feel like it had any quality to it. I also worried about it melting if I had it out on a hot sunny day!

However, from my research, I couldn’t find any quality vintage camera that could produce the same effect with the sprocket holes so I had to accept the price for what it was if I wanted to produce that type of photograph.

I’ll be completely honest, since I’ve been quite spoilt with my decent quality camera collection where I have the choice of interchangeable lenses and hard metal casing with a variety of apertures and shutter speeds to choose from, I wasn’t expecting a great deal from the camera and in some ways was ‘dreading’ if I had completely wasted my money on this purchase and the photos would be rubbish as I wouldn’t be able to focus the picture how I wanted etc.

I know with lomography cameras that the photo’s aren’t about perfection as quite frankly you wouldn’t be using them if that’s the style of photo what you wanted.

I decided that for my first roll of film I shot, I would get it developed at the Lomography lab (which was around £17 for development and scanned copies only plus postage of the film recorded delivery to Lomography in London).

Here are some of the results:

I also decided to experiment with the multiple exposure option on this camera because it was so easy to do and here are the results:

One particular shot I wasn’t happy with was where the sprocket holes go directly across the top of my husband’s head which I didn’t like so I now know for future reference I will need to bear this in mind when taking photographs and change the angle of the shot slightly to take this into consideration:

Overall, I was really happy with the results. I managed to produce images with this camera that I wanted to achieve and I love the colour the purple chrome film produces. I definitely love the artistic/experimental photos I can create by using this camera.

The main drawback is the cost of getting the photos developed every time which could end up being very expensive due to only having the 18 shots on the film and you would question how regularly you could afford to use it.

However, because I’m taking so many photos with different cameras right now, I’ve been able to justify purchasing my own film scanner (which I’m currently awaiting delivery of) so in the long run I will save money. Plus I get to have more control of the quality/colour/shade etc of the image that I’m scanning from the negative.

I’ve since taken some normal colour photos with this camera which I got developed at my local photo lab for £5 (and will be scanning them in myself once I receive my scanner).

In view of this, I will definitely be taking a lot more pictures using this camera and feel that the purchase for me and the use I will get out of the camera is worth every penny.

I’m going to be loading this camera with 400 ISO black and white film next as I’m really interested to see how the sprocket hole effect will look in monochrome.

UPDATE: I’ve since discovered that this camera has now sold out on the Lomography website (and they only had a couple in the shop when I bought mine) so I’m really happy I managed to get one when I did. Fingers crossed for anybody else out there looking to buy one that Lomography will hopefully get new stock of it soon.