Thursday 26 June 2014

My Diana +


 


My Diana + camera and I have such a love hate relationship. It's so damn unpredictable you just never know what might come out.

The camera is plastic which makes it very light and it takes 120 film. It has two shutter speeds; N (normal) and B (Bulb, which stays open as long as the shutter release is held down) the ability to create multiple exposures and a shutter lock for extra long exposures

Dan bought it for me for Christmas quite a few years ago with a load of 120 film. The first film I got developed was appalling, I think maybe one photo might of had a half blurry boat on it. The rest were just plain crap. As you can't get 120 film developed in your local Asda I had to take it a specialist lab who charge me £10. I was gutted! I gave it another go though and took the film to the lab, only to find that it had shut down. Being in Stoke there was literally no where else to get it developed and I'm pretty sure that film is sitting in a bottom draw somewhere.

So the camera gathered dust for quite a while. Until one day I noticed Lomography had started selling the 35mm back, which when inserted into the camera allowed you to shoot any 35mm film! Yay, finally I could crack out my Diana again. The first few films were pretty hit and miss, because the shutter button is on the side of the lens its really easy to get camera shake.

As I shot with it more and more the images started to get alot better. You can see a few more successful ones here.

It's not the most reliable camera and I would never use it to capture any special moments. It's more a camera for experimenting. The images included in this post (apart from the first image) were taken up Mow cop

To be honest I'm abit meh about them, none of them make me go wow but I think they are quite fun. I used a home made splitzer on a few of them like the one above, I basically just placed a piece of cardboard over half of the lens for the first shot, then covered the opposite side of the lens and took another shot. So the image is split in two.

Do you have any of the Diana cameras? What do you think? I'd love any tips or tricks to try if you have any?



2 comments:

  1. Lomography.com do a postal service for film developing, you pay upfront, they send you a postal bag and you send your film to them, it's equally quite expensive BUT they give you a link to access the photos online too which is quite cool. I'm going to use it for some colour slide films I've got.

    I've toyed with the idea of getting a diana but never taken the plunge so this was a good insight!

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    1. Ooo thanks that's really good to know! I know I should give the 120 film another go, I just always get panicky thinking of my film getting lost in the post haha. Need to be more brave! :)

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