23 posts tagged “lomo”
Whether it is digital or analog, mini cameras are the most trendy thing happening in the industry. Digital Minox, Rollei, Diana mini, Digital Harinezumi (just released new white edition), etc. They are all in this tiny little promotion happening in Festival Walk and APM LOG-ON.
And yes we are including the Olympus E-P1 too coz it is somewhat a smaller version of SLR. If you missed the chance to grab a Lomo mini camera keychain packaged in beautifully printed film cans, they are now back in stock, talking about 20% the size of the actual camera (hmmm, I did say they are keychains, not real cameras).
Most of us are bored by the strap came with our cameras right, so we've been collecting from Korea and Japan some of the nicest straps ever produced and some of them are here, the rest will be coming to the stores this year.
Friends from Lomo, Superheadz and Fujifilm gave us some very nice supports including some left over film canisters, cute POP and displays, etc and I feel thankful for their generosity and help. Superheadz even shipped from Japan a dozen foam boards printed with versions of the lovely Russian girl character.
One of the pink display took me a few hours to create using films, MT tapes and various products from other departments. If you have time, please do visit these two stores and see if they are still intact :) This promotion lasts for 2 weeks from now on. Hope you like it and able to find some inspirations from it. Check out the Flickr photo set of this promotion.
Note: thanks Martin for the hard work. Get well soon Moon.
Lomo is launching today a limited edition artist collaboration Diana F+ called Qing Hua (青花). The idea of producing this camera originates from last August's Diana World Tour exhibition in Hong Kong, which artist/illustrator Dorothy Tang was one of the participant to create a customized Diana F+. This beautifully done Diana F+ was loved by many and one year later today here's what you see as a consumer product from Lomo.
This is certainly not Dorothy's only brand collaboration, her modernized Qing Hua design/customization, among her other creative styles, got attentions from brands like Epson, Adidas, Nikon, Ofess, Bandai, spawning exhibition/installations in Beijing and Taipei.
A lot of efforts were being put into the printing on this Qing Hua Diana F+. You can see in fine details within these Qing Hua patterns small English characters and the camera body's white portion is covered with fake leather. So far this is the most beautiful Diana F+ I've ever seen.
Having said that, I still like the original customization Dorothy did in last year's exhibition. Alan Chan even included photo of this exhibit in his "Best of China" concept presentation for a project our company is working on in China.
I was stumbling on a lomo guy's desk months ago and saw Diana Mini's prototype and instantly every possibility of such a little gadget lit up. That hugely admirable guy could've told me the whole story but I was soon being pushed away from the birth place of such cute, cool, fancy 35mm camera by other lomo guys sworn to keep the secret. The mini will certainly touch people's heart and I suggested them to add a keychain type of strap so people can hang their mini on their bags like a charm. At least lomo should have a different camera strap instead of the usually ugly ones they produce.
I'm among the first to grab a Diana Mini in the world, just last night. Reason being that not only does the Diana original was a Hong Kong product, its current versions are manufactured still in China and Hong Kong is the closest hub to dispatch mini to the rest of the world. Even though lomo offices world wide was having a little teaser to launch the mini on the same date, we Hong Kongers are lucky enough to have it first logistically speaking.
Without the 24mm lens (not that it is removable), the Diana Mini is smaller than a LCA. You can shoot 35mm film in half frame or square with just a flick of switch between your shots, I'm sure this means the Diana 35mm back will get a lot less attention. The tiny mini feels actually more solid than its mother not only because of natural density but the solid clicks of the 4 switches (shutter, exposure, N/B and frame switch).
I'm yet to load film to the mini coz my son is still playing with it. He has learned how to use the flash tonight, once he learns how to turn the focus dial I will let him do his very first roll of film photography. You should see how he likes this cute camera, he grabbed it almost instantly and asked before he tried the shutter. After a few shots, he showed me the back of the camera for photos he shot :)
Other than a Polaroid, the other 2 analog cameras I brought to trip were Voigtlander R4A 35mm/F1.2 and LCA+. I had so much fun experimenting different film speeds, apertures and depth of fields.
You can't have the same shooting experience with digital. One of the little game I created for myself in this trip was to play with different apertures in the same scene. Sometimes with my Voigtlander, sometimes LCA+. In this trip I used exclusively Lomo/AGFA 100 negative and 200 slides.
The difference is huge especially with slide film bring cross-processed. Metering of the above pirate ship photos was done to the ship on the left photo but to the sky on the right. Both being cross-processed but the smaller aperture produced silhouette and dramatic colors. (Done with Voigtlander 35mm/F1.2, AGFA ISO 200)
I like the tree photo on the left better. Same AGFA ISO 200 slide film, shot using LCA+ just 5 seconds apart from each shot. The change here was due to fast changing sunlight so LCA+ recomposed another set of exposure/aperture values and the result differed so much.
So have fun with your analog camera, take 2 same shots with changing variables and see the difference. In time, you will find the link between what you imagined and how the actual photo looks like when it is developed.
This year marks the third year of an interesting event to be held in city'super and LOG-ON. In this concept cafe (particularly in Festival Walk's LOG-ON), you will find:
- Stationery and photography travel gears (19th June - 2nd July 2009): Canon, Fuji, Lomo, Moleskine, Midori, KOLO, MT-tapes, LUXE, Kodomo stamps, Staz-on inkpads, etc
- Travel Talks: 3 different sessions on 20th June 2009 presented by traveler and photographers. Learn how to steal time and write better on your journal, life hack tricks included. Why a trip to Cambodia changed a portrait photographer's view on life and how a traveler's mindset is different from a tourist's. How imagery and text combined can create lasting memory through photo journaling. Only a few days left for registration!
- Mini Game with interesting prizes: Follow the instruction on the postcard and go to Festival Walk LOG-ON store, find the hidden message which is a travel quote written by G.K. Chesterton, write it down and submit. You get a chance to win nice gifts from great brands (check out this Flickr photo and move your mouse over to see what they are)
- Stamp your notebook/postcard: Yes stamps, bring your notebook or use our postcard. I've made these icons into self inking stamps for your fun: Moleskine, LCA, Travel Cafe logo, fountain pen. They sort of summarized what this event is all about. Also, Designphil (Midori) in Japan made these two stamps for our event too! They are only available in Hong Kong during this period, so collect them while you can!
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Enjoy!
Took me a few tries to get the right sunlight for a key photo to be used in the Travel Photo Cafe 2009 event (19th June - 2nd July).
Grabbed a new book from Jim Collins during lunch a few days ago.
Carrying Sausage Man with me all the time coz his recommendations are quite pleasing.
Made champion/#1 loser/#2 loser badges from leather for the dart event in June, people love them. I wasn't thinking straight and made this holder for pen or for darts I didn't know, now it doesn't quite work either way.
Looking at my blackboard some time ago realizing that things got done pretty much as planned, pleasing.
As for outdoor activities, a day with family to a fishing village. Fisherwomen selling their catches or dried seafoods from their sampan parked at the pier.
A dog waiting for the last sampan to get away from the remote island.
Loving the look of my camera and leather case I made.
Sunset getting later as summer approaches but still a signal to go home.
Mom always drop food/fruits to our house while we were not here.
Oh an amazing outing with colleagues, outdoor BBQ using charcoal, sunny and breezy day between rainy days, perfect day.
Went to a factory converted arts center called JCCAC (Jockey Club Creative Arts Center). 8 stories of innovations and creativity in compartments. Low rise building with a lot of breeze. Lovely but hot day.
Great gifts from Kelly, the last lecture book, tops bookmarks, graphite object, etc. Thanks Kelly.
Yup, lomo produces chocolate too, I can't eat it coz I don't want to destroy its nice packaging.
Admiring a return package of the notebooks I sent to Japan for exhibition. Midori was kind enough to give me loads of interesting postcards, charms and envelopes.
Produced only in small quantity, the Lomo LCA 25th Anniversary badge. Going to that birthday party on 19th June!
End of blurb.
I was among the first to grab a Diana Instant Back from Lomo about a week ago. After trying out a few packs of Instax films with lots of failure, I finally learned something. Even under broad daylight, flash is almost necessary. Any photos taken in partly cloudy condition with flash will result in a very dark background since the shutter speed of Diana is around 1/60th sec. To get a fully lit environment behind your subject, you have to use the B mode and time yourself to 1/8th sec in addition to using a flash.
The fun of having a Diana camera with Instant film is that you get the nice look as well as instant gratifications. In addition, there are so many Diana lens accessories you can play with a lot of different effects. I'm particularly interested in the surprise effects from double exposures. One interesting method to get a nice collage is to type some light color text with black background on your computer monitor, shoot once using a Diana close up lens, then double expose the film with another scene with flash on your subject. It works great with black and white graphics on your first exposure since you are going to fill up the black space with things you shoot on the second. I haven't perfected it yet but it gave me hours of fun by burning money.
The difference between "Diana Instant" and Polaroid is that with Diana Instant, you can't frame your shot as precisely as a Polaroid, but you get to play with double exposure, different lens effects, color flash, etc. And of course I love the square image Polaroid produces along with its surreal color, smaller size photo from Diana Instant is less impactful but cute. One more contrast between Diana Instant and Polaroid, for me: fast snap shot vs. slow photography.
I heard about this great collaboration for nearly a month now, I was asking the LOMO people about it like constant bugging, and it is here finally!
[prototype photo removed]
No the image you see above is not the actual product. I was all too excited so I took my Choco-mix Diana (a prototype of our own custom Diana, originally targeted to launch in Dec 08 but the project was cancelled due to the economic tsunami) and my Fuji Instax mini and took this photo. I was imagining a lot of possibilities coz this combination of analog giants means a lot to our post-Polaroid era. You can imagine all the fun having instant results of a LOMO camera, you get the cool look of LOMO camera and the instax mini photos of Fuji (I hate the looks of Fuji instax cameras BTW).
Still don't know what I'm talking about? Check out the LOMO Diana Instant Back + web page. I don't see anything on Fujifilm's web site though. I realized just now that it won't be available in Hong Kong until May 09, so you won't see this product in our early April annual LOMO event in Festival Walk LOG-ON store. If I can get hold of a sample to try, I will post more. Ready to burn money through film!
Happy Chinese New Year!! It's the Year of Cow coming.
For a long time I've wanted to change my pair of glasses, embarrassingly long. And my avartar too. The previous one was from a picture taken like 9 years ago! OK, just the right time my old pair of glasses were broken during my most difficult month of 2008. Now I'm refreshing myself with a pair of white one along side with a new avartar.
And I have a new pair of lens too, the LUBITEL 166+. Technically, I borrowed it from a LOMO, but its new! I love the fact that it takes both 120 and 135 films and I can play with a lot of double exposure effects. The only bad thing so far about it is that the knob which locks the camera back is not so secure, I had part of my film exposed because it was easily loosen when I put into my leather bag. Behind the camera: my altered personality named Elmo and an orange elephant my son got from a xmas fair.
Second to the bikini on Koloist's Chaotic Universe post was the mentioning of post card which got me into this connection thing again. Now I don't consciously collect them but somehow I have them around me (and I don't mean bikini) and keep bumping into relating events and shops.
In 2007 I went to the Lomo World Congress event in London (1st Day, 2nd Day, Photos). On the last day of my visit, 30 mins. away from leaving the Royal National Hotel I saw a poster of the Bloomsbury Postcard Fair happening right there in a conference hall! The event happens EVERY SINGLE MONTH! But I got less than 30 mins., without waiting I paid 1.5 pounds and met really interesting folks!
I didn't know where to start, it was crazy, the clock was ticking. So I went to more organized exhibitors, the classification and the way they store them alone worth the entire trip to UK, it is like a primitive Google for searching postcards. You name it, they have a way. By countries, 30's 40's 50's, wars, transportations, children, eras, .... My mind flew away imagining that if there is such a physical search engine sorting resorting these postcards on the fly according to your search terms, wouldn't it be a sight?
And I met Ken Lister, a regular visitor to the show. He gave me some hints on how to find things there and he mentioned that there is such a fair happening in Hong Kong which I didn't know! Ken was an extensive traveler, been to many places in South East Asia, I wish there was more time to chat with him. Tick tock tick tock.
Postcards are not the only thing you find in this fair. Torn pages from old books/bibles, letters/deeds written by people long gone, surveyor's map, etc etc...... One thing in common though, you may not be aware of it but when you think about it, they are all PAPERS!! This amazed me really.
With only the last few pounds I had, I got 2 advertising postcards from fountain pen makers and 2 postcards of the "Peak Tramway and Barracks, Hong Kong", of which one of them was written by a Frenchman probably to his girlfriend in France. Imagine where this postcard had travelled and how it is connected to so many people. Again, if there is such a physical search engine to travel through time returning all properties relating to one particular object, ... oh perhaps too far fetched technically, we might as well just go to the Akashic Records to do the trick.
Here's a few more links of my postcard adventure:
- Postkarten shop in Cologne Germany I stumbled upon recently.
- Polaroid Postcard, a flickr group where people exchanging postcards in Polaroid format. You gotta try, beautiful.
- Altered Postcard Art, use any postcard, alter it to suit your own artistic vision.
Finally, I've always had great times doing these personal postcards using "spare time" during business trips and I'm not stopping as long as there is postal service available. See Hairspray and Bird Shit, Birthday Postcard to Okuyama san. God give me more time on earth!
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