First Diana Mini Shots

As some of you know I love using cameras that exist out of the main stream. Having played with pinhole, Holga and now Diana's I'll say now I have to a place to experiment when in the mood. With these kinds of cameras you can't get hung up about perfection. You can certainly try to create a certain outcome with them but the trick is to remember nothing is ever a given using these cameras.

My latest toy camera is the Diana mini. It literary is so small there is now way you can use the view finder to frame your picture. It's a shoot from the hip kind of camera. You need to be flexible and not be hung up with being to careful to center a picture. My only beef with this camera, is tiny dial ring around the lens which you use to set the distance of the shot. The dial itself is black and the ring where the distance lengths are also black. Someone like me, eyesight challenged that is, has a difficult time seeing where the distance is set too, especially when in the shade. I found myself looking over the tops of my glasses to see the dial.

Because I've only used one roll, Lomography negative film 200 ISO, I have not compared it to anything else. This film has the grainy quality of a 400 speed film but the colors are rich, especially in the sunlight. When I asked my photo dudes at the local camera shop what "kind" of film it was, they Googled the film numbers found on the negatives but found nothing. We had a great chuckle about where they film was probably made, "some tiny town 30 miles from Minsk" we chortled. You can use any film with this camera and I intend to try others to see what the results will be.

As you'll see form these shots I used the square 24 x 24 option thought also available is the standard 24 x 17 frame. This camera because it is totally manual also can take "half" shots so you can cram two images on one frame. I'll be trying that trick next.

Here are a few shots from the first roll.  Let me know what you think.