Lomography Diana+
written by shhquiet
on August 7th, 2008
, 5 comments
(3 votes)
The Diana, a camera rooted in a cheap and giveaway history survived a life of inferior image quality to the ever demanding perfection that technology was heading toward. Yet as the twenty-first century develops and the digital age sweeps over us all, those in search of something a little kitsch, analogue and authentic must look no further.
The Diana+ follows a near uniform copy of the original sixties counterpart with the addition of extra settings and switches. It allows much fuller aperture selection in the form of its four point sunny > cloudy > pinhole scale. The shutter speed switch changes between 1/60th of a second and bulb, in which you can take long exposures for as long as you like. Couple this with the pinhole mood and already you’ve got a much more capable camera than the original.
LSI didn’t throw away any of the quirks however. The traditional Diana lens leaves soft focus imaging, pastel saturation, and vignetting that create the ‘dream-like’ photograph that people associate with this camera. All these beautiful features still remain to create wonderful ‘just shoot’ images.
Throughout 2008, a range of accessories have been unveiled for the Diana+ camera, the Diana F+ (the flash counterpart) was released at the turn of the new year, allowing flash capabilities with the new range of cameras, but this was just the start.
The Diana+’s front standard lens can pop off and be interchanged for a selection of new lenses. The super-wide angle fisheye being one for all those circular wide angled moments you desperately need to capture. Then the standard wide angle lens allowing which not only adds a much wider capturing angle and range, but also allows for the closeup lens to be snapped in place offering focusing up to a matter of inches (without the need for a pinhole).
The Diana+ Splitzer adds further arbritary fun to Diana shooting, allowing multiple images to be shot and seemlessly stitched on top of one another on your final shot. And fear not soft-focus fans, all these lenses still retain the Diana+’s original quirks.
The latest in a stream of wonderful add-ons is the 35mm back for the Diana+. While these modifications have been availble before online, never before have they been brought with such ease, and no modification to your camera required. Shooting 35mm comes easily now, and as a little extra to those who wish to buy this back as opposed to mod yourself, you get a selection of frames from square > wide panoramic, allowing even further photographic possibilities.
With all these possibilities the Diana+ becomes the camera that every photographer needs. If ever there was a camera that could capture something beautifully but unobstructively, with accurate finesse, then its the Diana+.
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