History of the Diana
The Myth of the Great Wall Plastic Factory
Like a true legend, the original Diana camera’s birth is shrouded in mystery and conjecture. The popular account reads as follows: Back in the early 1960s, a Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong, company called the Great Wall Plastics Factory created an extremely inexpensive and completely plastic compact camera. Called the “Diana,” this little beauty was constructed of a lightweight plastic body and a cheap plastic single-element lens. Only the shutter and a few necessary parts were crafted in metal. The original specs consisted of two shutter speeds, three aperture settings, and manual focusing from about 1m to infinity. It shot 16 4x4cm images per roll.
Diana Clones and Copies
It’s assumed that this original Diana met with significant success in its domestic and export markets, so much so that a flood of knock-offs, copies, and derivatives were quickly introduced to capitalize on the demand. With names like “Future Scientist,” “Megomatic,” “Snappy,” “Windsor,” and “Zodiac,” the clones offered a huge range of varying features, including simplified apertures, extra shutter speeds, electronic flashes, fake light meters, longer lenses, and a 620 film format. Several versions were private-label commissions by large American companies such as GE, Reader’s Digest, JC Penny, and Avis Rent-a-Car. It’s not clear which copies were made by the original Great Wall Plastic Factory, and which were made by rival manufacturers.
Death of the Dream
As the story goes, production of the Diana and its various clones came to a close in the mid-1970s. As 35mm film and Instamatic cameras grew in popularity, the clumsy roll-film Dianas fell to the wayside. The camera would continue to be widely available for a few more years—often as a free novelty gift or a thrift-store regular—but its days were very much numbered. The march of progress had slain the humble Diana in its wake.
Back from the Ashes (The Diana+ by Lomography)
Just as the Diana was in its final death throes in Asia, it was gaining a new lease on life in the West. Photographers and artists began to realize the full creative potential of these cheapo cameras with their inherent light leaks, lens aberrations, and plastic construction. These visionaries saw the Diana’s characteristics not as faults, but as unique abilities to be treasured and vigorously employed. In the Diana, they found a tool to make the boring look intoxicating – and a way to completely let go of control. For many of them – especially established photographers, the unpredictability, cheapness, and insanity of the Diana held an irresistible appeal. Its blurry, leaky, vignetted, and often random images were the cornerstone of many an exhibit and portfolio. As the Diana became more rare and increasingly sought-after, its price skyrocketed from $1.00 at the local thrift shop to $150 on Ebay. Seriously, the guys over at Great Wall would have been kicking themselves in the rear if they knew.
The Loving Afterglow
Ask any Lomographer and they’ll quickly tell you about our love for plastic medium format cameras. It began with the Holga, a similarly constructed, yet more modern take on the Diana. Designed in the ’80s as a dirt cheap 120 camera, the Holga rose to cult status and attained a huge popularity throughout our international Lomographic community – so much so that we created several extremely successful products and books around it. As interest exploded around the Holga, we began to look into the camera that is misidentified as its predecessor: The Diana.
Ah, we can clearly remember the day when this ironic blue-and-black beauty first arrived at the Lomographic headquarters in Vienna. We had seen photos of it online, but no one in our company had touched one in the flesh. From the second that we held it in our quivering fingers, we fell hopelessly in love. Our first batch of leaky, blurry, dreamy, and definitely slightly screwed up images only served to confirm that warm feeling. It’s a kind of magic!
A challenge was set out on our table: How can we supply this incredible item to our loyal Lomographic Community? The initial production had ceased decades ago, so going to the original factory was out of the question. Luckily, our extensive experience with plastic camera design and production equipped us to pull apart the camera and literally rebuild it from the ground up. Like a radiant phoenix, the Diana could rise from the ashes and burn once again in the hearts of true analog-lovers around the world. And they wouldn’t have to fork out a ton of money on Ebay to get one.
From the beginning, we decided that our reproduction would have to add something to the original. We weren’t out to merely copy the design; rather, we wanted to retain its greatest features and improve upon them. This meant adding all-new functionality to the camera and dramatically expanding its creative potential. We’d call it Diana PLUS.
A factory in China with the tools and expertise was located and contracted for Diana+ production. The body was re-cast using a duplication of the original mold. The color scheme was tweaked to get that crazy shade of blue just right. The lens was designed and tweaked about a thousand times to obtain that “perfectly imperfect” mix of sharp, blurry, and “What the hell is that?” looks. The variable aperture and variable shutter speeds of the original were built inside. And then we sprinkled some of our very own pixie dust on the whole project to create the following Pinhole & Endless Panorama “PLUS” Features.
And that’s not all we have in store. You can expect to see a full range of Diana+ accessories, limited editions, seriously exciting camera variants, bags, and a whole lot more heading down the pipeline. From the day that we received our first film back from the lab, we knew there was no turning back. Long live the Diana!