The Lomo appears to be working at specifications once more. The post-op test roll came out A-OK, if a touch boring.
In other photo news, the Holga has arrived and is now loaded with film. I’ll burn through this first roll quickly and post the results when I get them processed.
I got it in my head tonight that I wanted to do a t-shirt surgery, and make my “Drum Corps Unplugged” shirt into a tank top. See, I always liked the design of the back better than the front, anyway, so I figured I’d shrink it to fit and make it something I might actually wear, instead of something just taking up space in the closet.
I think this one was more successful than my previous two surgeries because a.) I measured correctly, both the fabric and my body; and b.) I only had to sew in straight lines. 🙂 Still, though, it didn’t turn out exactly according to plan: I had a brain fart while I was cutting the straps, and made them narrower than I had intended, and I failed to note that my hips are bigger than my tits, making the shirt fit kind of tight and funny in places, and causing the straps to become fashion suggestions rather than anything that actually holds the shirt on.
I may wear this to tomorrow night’s drum corps show with Donna, or I may save it to wear to next Sunday’s drill camp up in St. Clair Shores MI. Or maybe it’ll be an around-the-house shirt. I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be wearing it in public, mainly because of the fit around the waist, and the straps that seem to be afraid of heights.
I’m definitely improving, though. 😀
Taken on Saturday, June 4, on our way to Cleveland for my step-brother Philip’s graduation.
Things to note:
I’ve been waiting impatiently for my Holga to arrive from Hong Kong. Since it’s not being tracked, and I have no idea how long airmail from Hong Kong will take, I decided to play with Photoshop and Holga-ize this image to bide my time.
From surfing around lots of Holga sites and photoblogs, I think I have a pretty good idea of how this photo might have turned out, had I taken it with a Holga. Of course, the Lomo with which I actually did take the photo is a decent low-light camera, and the Holga certainly wouldn’t have performed quite as well. So, I took some liberties.
I cropped the photo square to go with the 6×6 format I intend to use. Then I burned in the edges to simulate the vignetting of the lens, and I blurred the outer edges of the photo to add to the softness of the image, while leaving the center of the frame clear. As an afterthought, assuming I would have been using a super-fast film to capture this low-lit indoor image, I added some grain. And this is what I came up with:
I know I don’t have it quite right, but… *shrug* It was still fun to play.
I can’t wait to get my new Holga and try out a roll of test film to see how bad the light leaks really are. 😉
Last weekend, as I was snapping off some shots with the lomo after Philip’s graduation, a minor catastrophe struck.
The shutter release on my lomo stuck down. The film advance kept advancing. It wouldn’t stop. My heart leapt into my throat, then sank.
My poor lomo. I <3 my lomo. I would be sad if it were gone. Not to mention that bitch cost me $100 used on eBay. Luckily, the next day, I looked up how to do emergency surgery on a Lomo LC-A—basically, how to take off the cover and look at the insides. Just doing that must have jarred something back into place, because now it seems to work fine. (We'll see for sure after the post-op roll comes back in another week.) In those 18 hours or so before I managed to get the lomo back on its photographic feet, though, I entertained the idea of buying another "toy camera." I'd heard about the Holga, and I knew that the Lomo LC-A was actually a knock-off of another camera, which was based on yet another camera, so I knew there had to be something else. And, as much as I <3 my lomo, I'm in no hurry to cough up another $100 for one. So, after a little online research, off to eBay I went, searching for Holga 120‘s and Cosina CX-2‘s and Minox 35‘s and Olympus XA‘s and even Diana cameras and Fed 5B‘s. Finally, after some sticker shock on certain models and some disappointing bid-sniping for others, I managed to get myself a brand-new Holga 120N. Now I need to get myself some 120 film (I forgot that this auction didn’t come with any), and wait for my camera to arrive…
Here’s the danger: if I <3 my Holga like I <3 my Lomo, I could see myself becoming a collector of "toy" cameras. No, not just a collector, but an enthusiast. "Collector" makes me think that I'd have them all lined up on a shelf, pretty-like. Kind of like Mr. Marks, my clarinet instructor, did with his vintage clarinets. No, if I had more cameras, I'd be taking pictures with them, that's for sure. I'd want to start with the cameras-I-can-fit-in-my-purse genre, though, because that's the thing I love the most about my lomo. It's *there*. It's like the old #1 rule of photography: f/8 and be there. (If the part about f/8 —that's a setting on the camera, you non-photo types—if that's right, I should be happy with my Holga: it only has one f-stop. I think it's f/11, though...) The other thing I really love about my lomo is that it has depth-of-field. Again, for you non-camera types, that's where the subject is sharp and in focus, but the background is fuzzy (and sometimes the foreground, too). It took me a while to get the hang of the range focus concept—there's not a focusing ring, there's a focusing lever with four selections—but once I figured it out, I loved the results. The Holga, with an aperture of f/11, isn't going to have that so much, but it'll be a square format, and it'll have that vignetting (darkening around the corners) that looks like you're about to pass out. I think that's a fair artistic trade. We'll see. I hope this doesn't suck. I might have to find a place that develops 120 film locally, so I don't have to wait a whole week to get my first roll of Holga prints back. Of course, I've had poor luck with most any local photofinishers I've tried... so maybe I should just cultivate my patience. Or maybe I should wait until I even get the damn camera before I start worrying about it. 😉