Kamera Baukasten with Xtra 400

I loaded up the build-it-yourself Kamera Baukasten Vecco VC-20 with Fujifilm Xtra 400 and took it out to Islington, mainly in Joseph Grimaldi Park. Here are some results: These were taken fairly early in the morning on my way to work s the light wasn’t brilliant, but it seems to have coped okay. This camera […]

The AA Autolite Telewide Drive

Okay, this was the beginning of an attempt to get back into 110 photography – something I remember fondly from the dim and distant days of my youth. Way back in the days when everything was brown or a burnt orange (the real early 80’s, not the music video version) I had many 110 cameras […]

Smena 35 with Street Candy Mountain 100

Here we have one of the later camera’s from the Soviet line of Smenas, which all had the T-43 lens. It’s a zone focus camera with shutter speeds from bulb to 1/250 and adjustable apertures from 4 to 16. The body is plastic but once loaded it feels comfortable in the hand, like a good […]

Lomography La Sardina with Rollei RPX400

So I’ve had the La Sardina for a while, it’s The Guvnor special edition if I remember rightly. As with most Lomography cameras it is pretty much plastic throughout. Even loaded with film this doesn’t feel weighty in the hand and it fits in a coat pocket easily enough. it has two focus settings and […]

Prinz Candide Model 400 with Agfa APX 400 (plus re-rolling into a 126 cartridge)

126 film is a cartridge film format that’s been gone for a while. Gone, but not dead. Well, not exactly alive either. Somewhere in between. So, not dead and not alive. More . . . undead . . . yes, it’s a zombie format. You can’t buy new 126 film or, if you can, I […]

Kamera Baukasten (Vecco VC-20) with Agfa Vista 200

The Vecco VC-20 is a camera you build from a kit, which came free with a film box from Analogue Wonderland. Apart from a couple of springs it is entirely plastic, including the lens. According to one site I saw online it takes 10 minutes to assemble and a ten year-old can do it. That […]

Instant Photography

What is it about instant photography? Sure, there’s the instant gratification of having your image straightaway, but you get that with digital too. Is it the fact that it is a print rather than just an image on the screen, something physical and somehow more real? Maybe, all I really know for sure is that […]

New use for old glass

You are on a budget so, much though you might love to, you can’t buy all the new lenses you’d like. Sure the new 24mm Sigma lens looks cool but you have enough bank loans already and one for a camera lens might just break you – what do you do? Simple, use old lenses. […]

We come to praise the Lomo LCA, not to bury him . . .

Yes, the title of this post is a little silly but I like it so there. How is it that I like the Lomo LCA so much? I often find a lot of the whole lomography craze to be about people taking bad photographs and passing them off as art. I cannot afford most of […]

Real budget photography – why ‘under $500’ isn’t the same as ‘budget’.

In the leadup to Christmas and over the course of the New Year sales there have been a lot of articles about buying ‘budget’ photography equipment. I consider myself to be a budget photographer but most of this ‘budget’ equipment is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of my price range. Under $500 is not ‘budget’, under $50 maybe […]