Lomo Smena Symbol

6

One of the most rare and easily the most handsome Smena of all time. Its 3-element glass Triplet lens yields eye-popping color saturation and contrast. Manual aperture, shutter, and focus settings. Sturdy all-metal construction feels solid and smells amazing! A flash hotshoe and weather-symbol-guided exposure wrap up the package. Made at Lomo PLC in the former USSR

It’s called the Symbol because of the symbol scale on top of the lens mount that allows you to select the shutter speed based on light levels (symbolized by degrees of cloudiness). The distance scale on the manually focused lens includes symbols indicating head-and-shoulder portraits, full-length people, and mountains. The aperture is selected by changing the film speed ring in the front of the lens (limited to GOST 16-250, but functionally equivalent to f4 to f16). The upshot — while it seems to be a generic point and shoot, it is actually a fully manual viewfinder compact camera!

The shutter

You can set shutter speeds using symbols or numbers.
Shutter speed – 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250

Lens

The Smena Symbol has a T43 f/4 LOMO triplet lens. The T43 is the standard lens for all Smena cameras and is still in production today.

Viewfinder

There is some barrel distortion, but the colour is at least neutral. Parallax compensation consists of the familiar set of extra lines to demarcate the field of view when focusing closer.

Focusing

The lens’ focusing range is from slightly less than 1m to infinity. Handy is that the lens has two distance readout scales. The one on top of the lens barrel features four stylized symbols: a buste (1m), two figures (1.4m), a group (4m), and a house with a tree (10m).

The Symbol is an improved Smena 8m with a film advance lever (replacing the knob) coupled with shutter cocking, what makes the camera much faster and more convenient in use. Smoothly working shutter release lever replaced the crude button on top of the Smena 8M body, sadly the cord release socket was deleted.

So come on people buy one or borrow this camera. the choice is yours.
LOMO ON!

http://www.lomography.com/smena/smenasymbol/

written by specialblewah on 2008-11-08 #gear #35mm #review #smena #symbol #lomo

6 Comments

  1. adi_totp
    adi_totp ·

    keren pep!! mantap!!

  2. specialblewah
    specialblewah ·

    ahahaha thx adi!!

  3. anwar_furstenburg
    anwar_furstenburg ·

    Fantastic. I was thinking of bringing mine to the Philippines to take memorable photos and now I'm more confident. I just need more practice though since sometimes my rolls come out terrible, except for one that came out absolutely perfect.

  4. iamtheju
    iamtheju ·

    My Smena Symbol jams most of the time and the counter is always out; this makes me sad. I have to use my 8m now instead which I like more anyway because it works, lol.

  5. robert_l
    robert_l ·

    I have a Smena Symbol and it is an excellent camera seeing this makes me want to put a film through it again !

  6. hutschi
    hutschi ·

    Hi, I just got such a camera. It is really cute.
    The counter doesn't work, but this does not matter.
    The trigger is very good, softer than that of 8M. I like both cameras.
    A very impressive triplet, considering results (color, sharpness).

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