Ode & Promise to my Chinese and Russian Cameras

Spring and summer mean I can now dig my Holga, Diana and LC-A out (okay, take them off my shelves) and get new rolls of film so I can use them when the sun is out and the light is beautiful. I admit that I shouldn't neglect them during the colder, blearier months, but I do. 

The LC-A gets taken out on outings more often than my other film cameras, but I haven't been a good owner lately, and I still haven't processed the roll that Brent and I shot in Miami. This is a promise to start using those cameras again, and an ode to their awesomeness.  

The wide angle lens of the LC-A is 

one of the reasons I love it. 

Fujicolor 100 iso film gives 

some pretty damn great colors.

Sometimes, you get a lot more

detail than you'd expect.

It's a good portrait camera. 

The Holga, however, is trickier to use and get good results from. I wanted to love it. I really did. But I don't love it as much. Maybe I picked film with too low an ISO. Maybe I didn't adjust the settings to the shooting conditions. I also think Holgas are great tools for some subjects, and awful for others. They tend to bring out the gloomy aspects of places and objects. Truth be told, I get depressed just looking at most photos taken with Holgas, unless they're of shiny or bright things.  

I'm going to be using the Diana with its Instax back over the summer. In a couple of weeks, I'll be ordering 5 or 10 packs of Instax mini to take with me on vacation. I feel the same way about it used without the Instax back as I feel about the Holga, so it's not going to be needing any 120 film this summer. Despite the unreliability of the viewfinder when the back is on, it's a really great tool and so much fun to use. 

Definitely not what was in my viewfinder back then. 

Here I was aiming for his face, not his hands.