Camera review

A little review on old style, film cameras.

These are the four that I have. The first one I bought was the holga, known as a toy camera, very solid camera and easy to use this was the camera that got me excited and passionate again about taking photos. The other cameras I have collected in different places over the years.

Holga 120CFN. I just love the colourfulness of this one although it does comes in a few different colours, for me this is the best colour combo. It has a built in flash that you can twist round from clear to red, yellow or blue, which is really fun to play about with. The film is really easy to load, you can use the large 120 film however this film is quite expensive and more of a pain to get processed, so mainly I just used the standard 35mm film. However to use standard film you have to adjust to camera slightly by placing two pieces of foam between the film and the sprockets (it's really easy to do) close to door and your good to go. Sometimes there is little gaps at the side of the door that create beam of light on your pictures which can make them unique and interesting but if you don't like that you can use electrical tape and tape up the sides. What I like most about this camera is that it is a manual wind on so you can take double or triple exposures using differs coloured flashes, it's really flexible and gives you the freedom to be as creative as you want. I have used this camera loads of times and taken it away with me on many trips and the photos have always been really good. Overall a brilliant camera, if you were looking to buy a film camera I would recommend this one as it's really versatile with loads of features and give you great pictures every time. I bought my one for around £50 about 8 years ago but think it's still about the same price. It also comes beautifully boxed with a lovely book.

Mini Diana. After loving the holga so much I thought I would buy the Mini Diana I had heard they were quite good and the size really appealed to me, its about half the size of the holga. So I picked one up at urban outfitters it was also around £50, at the time they didn't have any with the flash included so thought I could pick up a flash later, which was a big mistake! The flashes on there own were another £50 which I never purchased as I thought was just too expensive. This camera for me has been a big flop, I have yet to get more than two photographs per film. The film is really diffecult to load and seems to stick after a few photographs have be taken, I have tried to adjust the door a little bit but still no joy. It comes with a really cute little book showing you some of the photos that other people have taken, which was a great extra. But although the look and size of the camera is great the practicality of it for taking pictures is really bad! This is just my opinion, other people might of had great success with this camera but for me it's a big flop!!!

This is a Lomography coloursplash camera. I think it looks a bit Sci-Fi, it's a good size and quite light, white with black edging, it has a colour flash that goes from yellow to purple to blue to pink. It fairly easy to load and produces good photos every time. The colours on the flash are not as strong as the holga but give more of a tint of colour. It is also a wind on camera so you can take double exposures and uses standard film. Overall a good camera although for me I don't like the look of it as much as the other cameras.

The last of the four cameras is this Kinon KT - 1100 f5.6/ 38mm. This camera was also aimed at the kid market, it's light weight with a detatchable flash. I picked up this camera pretty cheaply a few years ago at a car boot type sale in cyprus, at first I thought that the flash might fit on my mini Diana, a long shot I know but even if it didn't it was a interesting little camera anyway. I have only used it a few times but it seems to work fine, although it does feel a bit cheap and the stickers are peeling off. It uses standard film and comes with a small hand strap and black zip case.

 

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