Thursday, August 6, 2009

Toy cameras galore!

Okay, I'll admit it...I bought a Diana+ Camera a long time ago and never really used it. *hangs head in shame* I'm a digital gal, and I found the very simple plastic camera...well, fun, but odd! It was particularly hard to get the hang of loading the 120mm film, and with basically auto-nothing in the controls, I was never sure if I was getting results at all, let alone what those results might look like!

But I have to get over that whole perfectionism thing if I'm going to play with toy cameras, I guess! That's the whole point of the toy camera as a tool. With film, you can't chimp. You can't even see your results until days later. And with a toy camera, you sometimes can't even guess at your results! Light leaks, expired film...it's all unpredictable, and that's meant to be the fun of it!

I've been thinking lately about going back and playing with the Diana, and also with the Canonet qL19 I inherited from my Dad a bit ago. I actually loaded up the Canonet with film and have been shooting already...but I can't get over the feeling that I'm not getting anything interesting, 'cause I can't check it on the LCD! It's a whole other world, is film!


But anyway, this was really a long-winded way of winding up to saying I've found (through a link on the Blah Blah Blahg, thank you!) a great little resource for toy cameras other than those from Lomography, as well as various types and amounts of expired film! It's the Four Corners Store! They also have a blog, which is a lot of fun as far as reading over reviews on the performance of various toy cameras. I know what I'll be reading in my (increasing scarce) spare time! If I'm really considering playing with my Diana at last, I'll have to know what I'm getting into, right??

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