The Smena 8 is a plastic bodied 35mm viewfinder camera made by Lomo. and can also go by the name of Cosmic 35 and Cmeha 8.
image from here
I came across Smena camera when i was browsing Ebay looking to buy a Smena 8m (not to confuse them both) , i instantly loved the look of it and googled to find out more about it, because the ebay listing was useless.
It was made by the Lomo company in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and launched in 1963 and was produced till 1971 and was one of a series of Smena’s up to 9. The further version of the Smena 8 was the predictably named the Smena 9, which just had the self-timer deleted (it was basically the Smena 7 with film rewind knob added). So the Smena to buy for me was obvious.
So after getting the camera, I fed her some film and went out to experiment….. but when i went to pick up my film from my local lab they said that they didn’t print them because all of the negatives were blank :(
So not impressed by the camera i left it on the shelf to gather dust for a year or so.
But it wasn’t till the other day i did feel a bit sorry for it so i loaded her up with some
Lomo x-pro and taped the back up loads, mumbling ‘not this time you don’t’
and i was right the film was a success, the colors are really vibrant and the pictures are crisp so now that know abit more about the practical use of the camera I’m going to feed her some black & white film next,
So if anyone is thinking about buying this camera or have one already and had bad results from it i would strongly advise taping the back up just in case :)
I hope this helps you in enjoying the Smena yourself! Check out the microsite here
9 comments
stouf
Some great doubles !
3lla
The colours are fantastic! I'll definitely be saving up for a Smena :)
spendospend
this review was for the smena 8 not the smena 8m as pictured above, such a nice camera though, its a new fave :)
rater
Number 6 has something weird with the green light... I do not even know what it is that green thing! And good thing you gave a second chance to the camera!!
plesaleza
the rewind knob doesn't work on mine... but i'll give it another shot
spendospend
u need to push down the shutter button and turn it clockwise till the 2 little red dots meet, then u can rewind :)
sancast
amaan
hey. great article
i recently got a smena 1M and 4 photo's were ok. rest were blank.
what do you mean by taping?
blacktape