Lomography

KONICA C35: Choose Lomography
written by mattcharnock on August 24th, 2009 , 19 comments (13 votes)

Choose Digital. Choose photography. Choose a camera. Choose a lens. Choose an effin big pixel ratio, choose image stabilizers, anti static, compact flash cards and electrical light meters. Choose good flash guns, low light, and camera insurance. Choose fixed focus, zoom and tilt and shift. Choose your ISO. Choose white balance and matching colours. Choose a three tier gradient filter in a range of frigging colours. Choose photo-shop and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that office chair watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing monitor calibrations, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose HD, Hi res, J-peg and raw. Choose shooting your last on a camera which is nothing more than an embarrassment to the Phone cameras spawned to replace it. Choose your future. Choose Digital. I chose my future. The future is Analogue

(Iggy Pop “lust for life” starts up and I am running round a summer house in Denmark)
My Lomo LC-A+ was broken. My LC-A+ was missing. My LC-A+ was the only camera I had. I was cut off. No fix. Alone. Laid in bed shaking. Sweating. Couldn’t shoot, needed to shoot. Let me take a shot. Just one shot.

6am. I go to the beach with my brother-in-laws camera. It’s a 5d. It’s a great camera. Its like my Lomographic Buprenorphine. I shoot the sunrise. The images are good. The colours are accurate. But it doesn’t take the edge. The loss of analogue. I need X-pro with blown colours. Gorgeous soft focus. The security of that nostalgic feeling of childhood. A sense of art and exhibition. I need analogue.

11am. I persuade my wife to take me to a flea market. She can see I am hurting and I need a real hit. I desperately search the stalls for a camera. I find a few over priced Zenits and not much else. Then like a shining grail I see the Konica C35ef. 50 kr (about £5) I take it home changed the batteries (something I would recommend whenever buying a camera from a flea market or charity shop) and start shooting.

In fairness this type of camera does not usually appeal to my quest for aesthetics and quirkiness; but when you need that Lomo-hit you take what you can. Looks wise it is a little boxy and a little too angular. Definitely about function rather than design. In fact the only real nod toward design is the orange writing on the black body. It’s very simple. All this means you understand it straight away, no reading manuals or getting it wrong: No thinking, just shooting…hmmm…where have I heard that before?

The camera is similar to the LC-A in that it auto exposes. You select the iso you want to shoot at from 50 to 400 and it does the rest. It is also a rangefinder with feet, meters and little diagrams to help you find the right distance. The numbers are found on the lens and the diagrams can be seen through the view finder which also shows you what f stop you are shooting at. It can also take a cable release. Unlike the LC-A it has a built in flash which pops up from the main body of the camera and unlike the LC-A the flash does not rear curtain. It also has a self timer. Its lens is a little larger to sporting a Konica Hexanon 38mm (what ever that means!)

I was totally ecstatic when I got the results from the lab. This camera is great, and while not as practical in size as the LCA, it is as big in spirit. It hasn’t left my side since. The weirdest thing about all of this was when I bought the camera the woman I bought it from looked me dead in the eye, held my hand and said “I hope this camera gives you what you are looking for”. In all honesty it did. Lomo addiction is a serious issue.

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