Holgas

[stowpirate]

if you don't have the skill to use it you will not make amazing photographs.

What about luck? Take a hundred photos and one or two will make the grade. Then throw in: taste, fashion, age, flavour of the month and even the mood or state of mind of the viewer

A fuzzy mobile phone shot of a family pet will seem like a fantastic photo to a child To me and maybe you complete rubbish

I do not think it is as simple as photographic skills.

 

[selamlar]

Its the fetishising of qualities that are normally considered as faults that irritates me. Although it is of course entirely possible to argue that this is the beauty of toy cameras.

 

[boskysquelch]

Its the fetishising of qualities that are normally considered as faults that irritates me. Although it is of course entirely possible to argue that this is the beauty of toy cameras.

Be that as it may the same could be said of Digi vs Filum. Color(sic) vs B/W...Canon v Nikon blah blah blah Hasselblad vs Sinar...Lunedyne vs Strobe vs Elinchrom vs Balcar...tungsten vs HMI chips vs mash...horse vs donkey...radials vs cross-plys!!!

But the raison d'etre of a camera is to record and preserve an image for the user.

Lusers there will always be.

 

[stowpirate]

Its the fetishising of qualities that are normally considered as faults that irritates me. Although it is of course entirely possible to argue that this is the beauty of toy cameras.

I remember a few years ago watching a TV documentary about the cretins that tried to market the concept of Lomography and in particular the Lomo LC-A It was about a fight over market rights and cheap pricing - the typical sort of US or French style protectionism in action. At the time the original cameras were not even considered to be toys but super compact 35mm with a good lens and abysmal build quality. The first LC-A had a built in shutter failure fault with the later M version being a little more reliable. They were expensive cameras at the time except on ebay where I got one for £15 - I collect Soviet Junk

Now this LC-A junk is sought after by the uninformed and can cost a small fortune. There are some other toy Lomography cameras to consider that have proper lenses that can cost peanuts. The Lomo Smena and Cosmic cameras cost in th 50p-£5 range

If you see a Diana camera at a car boot sale - offer them 50p or less and sell it on ebay. It should sell for arounf £30-£40 - I sold one in this way.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Its the fetishising of qualities that are normally considered as faults that irritates me. Although it is of course entirely possible to argue that this is the beauty of toy cameras.

It's six of one and a half dozen of the other, when all's said and done. Many people fetishise lens sharpness.

Me, I think it's perfectly possible to take a "great" (whatever your subjective definition of "great" happens to be) picture with any camera. Bert Hardy, a late but legendary photo-journalist who worked for "Picture Post" once took up a challenge that boiled down to taking a "front page" picture with a Box Brownie that had a meniscus lens, a single speed shutter, and had a single stop (F8 IIRC). The resulting corker was titled "Maidens in Waiting" and showed two girls sitting on a seaside railing, with the wind catching their skirts.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

And here are those very maidens. Not bad for a box Brownie eh! Hardy did it to introduce a photo competition in Picture Post after he had written that anyone could enter, whatever camera they had.

This same picture was in more recent years featured in a British Rail poster for Senior Citizens Railcards. It was only enlarged to about a foot high though in the middle of the poster. Their target audience might have seen and remember the original. It was a glass lens though, unlike the Holga.