Canon 1000f - Lomography 100 /02

I'm back with some more film that's not part of my monthly series but leftover from last year. I've shot a roll of Lomo 100 in my canon film camera (1000f) before with happy results you can see here and I was just as happy this time round :)

These shots are from our last Fraser Island trip which you can read more about over here too.

Tomorrow I'm going to throw up a few extra photos from the roll that I thought warranted being converted to black and white :)

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Rangefinder Camera - Minolta hi-matic F

I'm finally getting around to adding more cameras to my film camera guide - today's addition, is a camera I've had for a while but shamefully have only put one roll of film through it. It's a relatively cheap film camera, you can pick up for under $50 off eBay and I got mine whilst thrifting.

The hi-matic f, is a range finder camera which peaked my interest since I've never owned one before. Your typical SLR (single lens reflex) cameras have a mirror (reflex mirror), so when you look through the viewfinder the mirror shows you what the lens sees, with a rangefinder camera it's mirror-less so the viewfinder doesn't give you an accurate view of your shot which is something you have to take into consideration when shooting. On the plus side without a mirror it's really compact and inconspicuous and from reading this article makes for a good street photography camera!

Another thing with rangefinder cameras is to get an image in focus you look through the view finder and you'll see a ghost image in front of your image.  You then need to match up both images by turning the focus ring on the lens. Since this was my first range finder, I found it more novel than awesome but I definitely want to revisit this camera again.  

The batteries meant for this camera are no longer in production (or at least I couldn't find them) so I bought a pack of AG13 (LR44) button cell batteries, placed two batteries on top of each other, wrapped a thin strip of paper around the two (to stop them falling apart) and popped them into the battery compartment which did the trick :)  The comment thread of this article suggests that this battery trick will give more voltage and thus causing the exposure meter to read wrong and underexpose. The film I got back did seem to err on the underexposed side so possibly due to the battery voltage.  Unfortunately, because this camera is auto, the only way to really play with exposure is to rate the film speed lower.  You do this by turning a black wheel on the front element of the lens.  The film I used was 100 speed and I set the camera to 50 but next time I'd use a much higher speed film and go a few stops lower :)

The camera comes with a fixed 38mm Rokkor lens 2.7f/stop so wide but not super wide!

I also think the camera looks really nice, that counts for something right?

I put through a roll of lomography 100 Colour for my test roll, I wouldn't say I got stand out results and probably why I never came back to it but I'm definitely keen to put through a black and white roll next time, I think that's where its magic could lie!

Blue light leak? Not too sure what caused this guy

Rangefinders are meant to be sharp with no edge distortion or vignetting (black edges) which I think these photos do a good job of showing

Have you guys had experience with rangefinders, yay or nay - any tips?

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Ultra Wide and Slim - lomography 100 film

Onto my favourite toy camera, the superheadz Ultra Wide and Slim :) I love this camera because it's sturdy, comes in amazing colours, is affordable and provides great saturated colours. I got my first one of these cameras on my 2011 trip to Japan I picked out the pink colour and used it excessively before tragically losing it to gosh knows where - I secretly hope someone found it, developed the pictures and is out there on facebook searching for it's owner :P  Anyway after that loss I wanted to experiment with different toy cameras so I got my Holga 135bc and my juice box but I still missed my superheadz so I eventually bought another one in gold :) The gold is shiney and really gold (awesome) but the pink was almost rubbery and I maybe even liked it better (although that may just be nostalgia talking)

The nice thing about this camera (as its name suggests) it's ultra wide meaning its lens captures a wider view than my other toy cameras with a focal length of 22mm (getting close to fish eyed wide!) without suffering any of the distortion

Like the juice box camera you have no control over the settings apart from your film choice which also means you can't do double exposures either but for what it is, it's awesome :)

STATS
11 keeps 27 fails
Fail reasons: close up shots, shooting into the light, indoors
Things to remember: you think I would had learnt all the fail reasons by now, but I'm not really posting the film in a chronological order (my excuse anyway!) 

Okay so the things I have to remember are; don't do close ups, don't shoot into the sun - toy camera don't make sun flares attractive (not from my experience anyway) they also need lots of light so don't even think about shooting indoors...okay got it! Next time I'll treat you better Ultra Wide and we'll have more success together :)

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Sunny Juice Box Camera - Lomography 100 Film

Okay this Lomography 100 film roll was recently put through my Sunny juice Camera so I have more of an idea of where things went wrong :)

STATS
12 keeps 23 fails
Fail Reasons
Shooting into the sun, the plastic lens doesn't handle that too attractively! Shooting indoors - what was I thinking! Fingers over the lens and trying to do close up shots

Things to remember : The fail reasons are pretty much no brainers, I obviously wasn't using my brain when taking them.  Maybe the problem with me and toy cameras - I'm so use to doing everything manually on my other cameras that when it comes to toy cameras and all I have to do is press a button I tend to just shut off- need to be a bit more diligent & always always have fun!

On a side note I see the light leak again, could it possibly be my cameras dodgey closure letting in light, eep I really hope so!

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Canon 1000F - Lomography 100

Okay I picked up another film camera this time for $10 which is funny because although reasonable was still more expensive than my three dollar camera and yet not as good quality. When I say not good quality I just mean it has some limitations, it has a slower shutter, resulting in the inability to use my lenses wide open in the sun (they let in too much light which the shutter can't counteract with speed). It definitely doesn't have the bells and whistles of the EOS 3 but in some ways I like it better because it's so simple! It is also capable of double exposures which is fun!  

You can pick up the 1000F from eBay for really cheap, under 50 bucks - just saying! You do have to watch though with second hand cameras as the shutter only has so many clicks until it dies!

STATS

27 Keeps 11 Fails

Fails Reasons: The cool things about the 1000F is it has a built in flash which to some is probably hideous but I actually like that cheesy Terry Richardson-esq bad flash style :p I tested the flash out with a few self portraits (using the self timer) at night and they would of been fine except for the fact that I was using my 35mm lens with lens hood (making the lens length too long for the flash range, aka the lens hood left a big black shadow on each image). So next time I'm going to use my 50mm without the hood and see if that works out! The other fail reasons where just ugly double exposures but that wasn't the film or the camera's fault

Things to remember: I got super excited when I got this roll back! I'd finally felt like I had understood the need to overexposed colour film. I had read about not doing double exposures of flowers in full sunlight and about how much to underexposed per double exposure shot but in the end I just thought, more light more light and that seemed to do the trick! I did shoot most of the roll at a very picturesque location so it was hard to mess up but still I liked how the film performed and will (and have!) bought the lomo 100 again :)

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Canon EOS 3 - Lomography 100

So today I'm profiling Lomography 100 colour film using my Canon EOS 3.  100 ASA/ISO film just refers to the speed of the film - commonly known as the ISO on digital cameras.  100 is a super slow film, not very sensitive to light and therefore needs a lot of light, you can get light in a couple of other ways, through the speed of the shutter, the thing that makes the noise on your camera when you take a photo, or through widening your aperture (usually on more expenses lenses). So why use a slow film and not just a super fast one that will work in low light situations? Well 100 will give you super fine grain :) If you're planning on using your camera on a sunny day I'd always go for a low speed film!

Lomography is all about their plastic fantastic cameras but they also produce there own series of film. I'll say straight off the bat that I think for the price their film is very reasonable and I'm currently stocked up on a variety of their films! They're also a Worldwide company so having a website specifically for Australia is a great plus for me as shipping is very reasonable :)

STATS

16 keeps 20 fails (wowsers!)

Fail Reasons: Not in Focus / Bad Cropping (on my behalf) / Boring Shots

Things to remember: Quite similiar to the portra 160 as in I was making the same mistakes; using autofocus on the EOS 3 (it's very hit and miss - use manual focus!) taking boring shots in the hope that the awesome film colours would save them (rookie error) and just general bad cropping. I found that this film is less reliable than portra 160 but that I needed to step up my game and think more about each frame before pressing the shutter button, something that film definitely teaches you to do! 

So my verdict for these slow films is that I'd choose Portra over Lomography if money wasn't an issue but film photography can get quite pricey, especially factoring in developing, so for everyday shots I'm quite happy to stick with my lomography film :)

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