Category Archives: photography

Seeing the world through my viewfinder.

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Cosina CX-2 Test Roll

Cosina CX-2

I bought my Cosina CX-2 on eBay last spring for under $25 shipped. I’d been waiting for a decently priced one, especially since I overpaid through the nose for my Lomo LC-A back in 2004, and the Cosina CX-2 was purported to the THE camera that the LC-A was modeled from. I got this particular camera for a decent price — mostly because the seller was upfront that it needed new light seals.

Honestly, it’s not that bad. My Olympus XA has seals that don’t look much better, so I figured I’d take it out for a spin without doing any seal replacement (mostly because I’m still inexperienced at replacing light seals).

I was on the fence about the seals for a while, though, so I didn’t take the camera out for a test drive until September. I took the CX-2 for a walk to the new Middlegrounds Metropark in downtown Toledo, then finished off the roll that weekend.

Cosina CX-2 Test

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Mugging Out at the Playground

Cosina CX-2 Test
[Taken 1 October 2016]

This was the last frame from the maiden voyage of the Cosina CX-2, precursor to the Lomo LC-A. Expect an actual in-depth review sometime soon, but the tl;dr version is that Lomo did a pretty good job of copying this camera, for the most part, but the Cosina feels a bit more reliable.

I haven’t taken my Lomo for a spin for a good seven years or so, mainly because if I want a compact film camera that can be fully automatic, I’ll just take the Olympus XA — and I rarely want that high-contrast “Lomo” look about my photos these days. The Cosina, though… it has all the charm of my LC-A with none of the fuss. It might get some time to shine.

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Three Imperial Cameras

Yes, I did. I bought three Imperial cameras in one trip to the antique mall last night, two of which are clearly identical but rebranded. The Chicago camera collective did plenty of that, but this is my first real example of it.

The two snapshot cameras take 620 film (i.e. 120 on a smaller spool) and the Lark takes 127 (aka Brownie) film. Both of those films are available nowadays, although the 127 is a bit more expensive, being that people don’t use Brownie snapshot cameras like they did some 60 years ago.

Looking forward to cleaning these up and testing them out!