My new old-fashioned toy

I haven’t been this excited in a long time: I have a new film camera!

It’s a Lomography lc-A + with a Russina lens – the brand that came up with those super saturated images now known as Instagram effects on digital captures. This is where that started. There was a film camera before there was the Internet, remember? Seems like forever ago. This camera has a lens that is ready for effects and adventure. You’ll know instantly what I mean when you see what she can do- and my images of my images here didn’t do justice to the beautiful prints I have.

I’m in *love* with my camera. Sadly there aren’t enough people driving business for Lomography’s rent payments on Toronto’s Queen West and the necessary profit margins, so the shop closed. Online is open 24/7 though.

I shot my first roll of film and it was incredible. I wish I could turn these all into black and white images to post them all here. I promise to shoot a roll for you. Maybe for the first snow this fall?

Here are a few snaps from the roll:

image At Sandbanks’dunes this summer

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View of the CN Tower from the parkette at the CBC

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My sister in front of her new house, two weeks before the move

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My nephew Maxime at the Winnipeg Zoo’s butterfly garden,

one month before his sixth birthday

All images by me.

Diana wore white

This weekend I had the pleasure of being introduced to Diana, a royalty of sorts.

Born in the ’60s with a bargain price tag of about $1, the plastic Diana seemed like a bad idea out of Hong Kong’s Great Wall Plastics Factory. Perhaps she was ahead of her time: Diana’s charm lies in her unpredictably gritty and raw renditions of what glosses over the viewfinder. Diana’s film tells stories are sometimes blurry, colours saturated and dark shadows sometimes creep from the edges of the frame.

Well, well. Guess who rose to fame in her posthumous days as a cult fave now fully back in production?

Today Diana is still a steal with a starting price tag of a mere $59 for the Elderweiss model and comes in every colour, finish, and lens play you can think of- and then some. Might we recommend checking out what all the fancy Diana-toting peeps are doing with theirs? Those who have one are quite excited about it.

I really liked her in white at Toronto’s Lomography store. Here are a few pics of me and various Dianas taken on a non-Diana cam (but that may very well change-!).

 

 

 

Images courtesy of yours truly.