Lomography Lomo'Instant White - Instant Film Camera

Product Information

The Lomo’Instant and the Diana are both instant cameras designed by Lomogrpahy. These cameras work like Polaroid instant cameras, but they use Instax film. They are reliable and definitely capture that dreamy, lomo effect In a sense, lomography has always been around. There have always been photographers exploring odd equipment and pushing artistic bounds. Lomography is an avant-garde approach to photography that uses quirky camera gear to achieve a lo-fi aesthetic.

I’ve got a section on the best lomography cameras later in this article, but for now, here are a few brands and cameras you can keep an eye out for: Most of the time, the shots produced are nice enough - there is a certain degree of unpredictability, but you’re always going to get that with instant cameras, and it will be that which appeals to many users. In the bottom of the Lomo'Instant Square camera, you’ll see there’s a remote control which can be removed to use for shots from a distance. It accepts a coin-type battery (DL2032). If you don’t want to use the remote control, you can just leave this attached to the camera base and forget about it, but it’s useful to have for group shots and the like. The remote control has two buttons, one which will just take a shot, and one which will set off the 10 second self-timer. Instant cameras are not exactly instant. You have to wait at least 90 seconds for the picture to "fill in" to view the finished result, but we often found it took several minutes for the completed image to fully bake, revealing richer color and sharper focus.Manual focus is required. The lens is a 27mm (full-frame equivalent) prime; the wide field of view and narrow aperture capture quite a large depth of field, so zone focus is possible. When the lens board is closest to the film plane, the camera captures everything from 1 meter to infinity in focus, and using the focus lever to extend it away from the body allows for close focus from 0.4 to 0.9 meter. There are no markings for feet or inches, so you'll have to think metric when focusing—just remember that 1 meter is about 3.3 feet. The optical viewfinder is fixed and offset from the lens, but the Instant doesn't focus close enough for parallax to be an issue when framing images. While the Lomo'Instant Wide can produce breath-taking images and enable the user to get as artistic as their creativity allows, it is also quite expensive. For many, the retro design, creative features, and picture quality will be enough to justify the price tag, and if we hadn't had so much trouble with the printing process, we'd completely agree. However, having access to printed photos in seconds is the main draw of instant cameras, and this one struggled to provide that. Also, the fact that this camera uses replaceable batteries, which are not included, means that the cost will continue to grow with its use. One saving grace is that the film for this camera is on the more affordable end, but this too will add up the more you use it. Conclusion Using the Square effectively requires a bit more discipline than with typical instant cameras. But then you see the results that the glass lens delivers: It's really, really sharp. You don't get the softer look that you get from plastic lenses like the ones used by Fujifilm in many of its Instax cameras, or even our favorite high-end instant model, the Instax Wide format Lomo'Instant Wide. Sharp and Square There’s no escaping quite how big the Lomo’Instant Wide is: this is definitely a camera you’ll need to hold with two hands. The retro styling feels like an evolution of Lomo’s previous instant cameras, like the Instant’Automat, but the build quality hasn’t changed. The viewfinder protrudes out to the side of the camera, and is clearly designed for right-handed users. Lefties will have to squish their nose into the casing to get their eye correctly aligned with the viewfinder. The basic optics have rough guidelines, but you’ll often find more of the scene in your photo than it suggests.

The diminutive 1.8- x 2.4-inch Instax Mini prints (costing about 75 cents each) generally achieve a good balance in both color saturation and brightness, and the fill-flash lit faces in outdoor shots pretty well. Colors were just a tad muted compared to some Kodak camera images using its Zink printing tech. Unlike all-analog models (such as the instax mini), the Evo captures digital images that you can preview on the generous 3-inch and slightly tweak — orientation, brightness, and color vividness (with a dreamy "natural" option) — before committing to a print. Fujifilm's mobile app doesn't allow much control of settings, but can send smartphone images to the camera's printer. (Going the other way, you can transfer the Evo's digital images to a computer using the camera's microSD card slot.) The Holga brand is synonymous with toy cameras and the lomo style. The Holga 120N is one of the most popular choices for exploring lomo on the 120 film format. I’ll be looking at cameras both from the lomography band brand as well as community favorites from the vintage and toy categories. 1. LomoApparat 21 mm Wide-angle Camera Lomo has come to be a term that’s generally used for vintage cameras, budget cameras, toy cameras, and even your old instant camera.The Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 is a bulky beast. It has a 114-mm, f/14 lens and uses only Instax Wide film for a picture that's ideal for capturing landscapes or groups of people. While the camera has a digital readout, it has fewer controls than the Mini 90. You’ll find the Automat Glass’s shutter release on the front of the camera. It takes the form of a mirrored rectangular button, which means that you can use it as a “selfie mirror” when composing self-portraits. The camera’s flash is also on the front, and there is space to insert coloured filters to change the look of your images. As with pretty much any instant camera of this kind, the results can be a little unpredictable - which some people will argue is the charm of the camera. The conclusion we often come to with Lomo products is that it’s good “if you like that sort of thing”, and that’s no different here. While this is a good performer of a camera, with the lens producing decent results, and the colours and focusing coming out well - once you know how to get the best from the camera - you pay quite a high price for the novelty of having Instant shots.

Best cameras | Best DSLR cameras| Best action cameras| Best waterproof cameras| Best point-and-shoot cameras| Best mirrorless cameras| Best cheap cameras| Best GoPro camera | Best GoPro accessories| Best drones| Best 360 cameras | Best iPhone lenses | Best iPhone tripods | DSLR vs. mirrorless | Best Nikon accessories | Best Sony a6000 accessories If you have an artistic flair, try Lomo’s latest camera [the Lomo’Instant Automat] on for size. This Instax Mini-compatible cam is great on its own, taking sharp shots and including features many Fuji-made cameras omit.The fact that you can add on lenses to the front of the Lomo'Instant Automat also gives it wider appeal than a standard camera - although the close-up lens doesn’t seem to produce the results we would expect from it. So, what makes a lomography camera so special? It’s an embrace of the history of photography as well as avant-guard approaches to what counts as a “good photograph.” As it is, there is one built in lens which has a focusing distance of 0.4 metres and is equivalent to 27mm. You can also create multiple and long exposures, and there are coloured gels available in the box for the inbuilt flash. Creative Mode (Flash Off): When Creative Mode (Flash Off) Mode is selected, the flash will be turned off and you can control the aperture by yourself and shoot long exposures. When shooting using Creative Mode (Flash Off) in daylight, keep the shutter on “N” (normal exposure speed 1/125s) and use the exposure compensation dial to adjust the aperture. In this way, you can set the exposure compensation dial to +1 or +2 to get brighter images or set it to -1 or -2 to get darker images. When shooting using Creative Mode (Flash Off) at night, switch the shutter to “B” (bulb – long exposure) and turn the exposure compensation dial to +2. This setting is perfect for shooting fun long exposure instant photos without flash and doing light-paintings!

As always with Lomo, the unpredictability of it is part of the charm - don’t expect perfection every time and you should be more than happy. The price of this camera is quite expensive, but as it is so easy to use, some people may feel this is value for money - it may also come down in price as it spends longer on the market. On the bottom of the Lomo Instant is a switch for turning on the camera. You have three different options to choose from, which includes automatic (with flash, designed for all-purpose shooting) and creative with flash plus creative no flash.That said, you can get some pretty nice results when the Lomo Instant is used in certain situations. It tends to work best in outdoor, bright, sunny conditions. Which could make it an interesting camera to take with you on your next holiday. Jumping into Lomography might seem challenging, especially if your mainstay is digital photography. The Wide format means you need to consider composition in your shots and highlights can often be blown out. A small viewfinder window is found in the top left hand corner of the Lomo'Instant Automat. You can use this to roughly frame your photo, but thanks to parallex error, it’s not completely accurate and you may find you need a bit of practice to understand exactly what is, and what isn’t, likely to end up in your shot. On the right hand side of the camera is the tripod thread, while there are lugs on the top of the bottom of the camera which can be used for attaching a strap.