Lomography

Needs Lots of Patience with Lomo Cameras

2007-01-15T12:00:00.000+08:00

Taking pictures with Lomo cameras is an art. The pictures produced by a lomo camera are often seemed as artistic. The result is also unpredictable.

Unlike modern digital cameras which give you perfect shot every time, lomography is more like an adventure -- a trip to the unknown. And I like the thrill.

Anyhow, I have been toying not only with my lomo's but also take lots of pictures with my digital cameras including using my mobile phone's camera function. I think they call it camera phone nowadays.

As far as digital photography is concerned, taking a well-exposed picture is as easy as pushing a button. However, with the advent of digital photography, fast computer loaded with lots of RAM and cheap photo editing software, it is the art of digital photo manipulation that is difficult to master. And I think it is an ultra art form.

River Kwai with my Lomo camera

2006-08-22T14:30:00.000+08:00

I visited River Kwai three weeks ago and I packed along one of my first lomo camera, a Minox GT-E loaded with Kodak BW film - Kodak Professional BW400CN. Before I talked about the photo taking with the Minox GT-E lomo camera, let me explain why I wanted to try out this Kodak BW400CN film.

I have always been facinated with black and white (BW) photography. Unfortunately, it is a skill that I've yet to learn properly. And using a lomo camera makes BW photography even more challenging. Beside just concerned about the angle and framing, you also have to manually adjust:

The F-Stop to set the Exposure
The Focusing to Object Distance
The Depth of Field

Also, it is quite difficult to find BW processing and printing, and it is definitely more costly than color prints. That's where the Kodak BW400CN comes in handy, I can take BW pictures and send it to ordinary mini-lab for processing. The BW400CN can be processed by the C-41 process and printed by the same machine that print color photos. However, you don't get truely black and white photo. If you are lucky to send it to a good mini-lab and the technician is skillful enough, you do get near BW print.

Here's some photos that I've taken with my Minox GT-E lomo camera using the Kodak BW400CN film.

The outdoor shots at the famouse "Bridge over River Kwai" were taken with the 2x density filter as the ASA400 film is too sensitive for the late morning sunlight.

More photos taken with my antique Olympus C-2100 digital camera at Places Less Travelled.

Singapore Outdoors

2006-06-11T11:36:00.000+08:00

This post may have very little to do with Lomography or LOMO cameras. Anyway, its about doing things outdoor activities like jogging, hiking, bird watching, rollerblading, swimming and etc. As you know, Singapore is urbanised city and there is very little forest and greenery - unless you consider Botanical Garden a forst! You may find some forested area in around the central catchment area. Here, there several reservoirs and at MacRitchie Reservoir there are a number of forest trail where you can really be close to Nature. Another of my favorite is the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. I've been there several times and the best time to visit is between November to February where you can see many species of migratory birds.

Now, I guess it would be fun to take some lomo shots of people doing all these fun activities. And I wonder how the scenery will turn out with my newly acquired Holga 120GCFN Lomo camera!

What is LOMOgraphy

2006-06-08T14:07:00.000+08:00

LOMO is the brand name for a USSR made mechanical camera - which was percieve as low-tech, low grade, crude and even cheap camera.

And in the days of digital cameras, nearly all old fashion mechanical cameras could be considered as lomo cameras. And LOMOgraphy is about taking spotaneous shot with a lomo camera. Snapping the previous moment without concerning about focusing, exposure or even if the camera was defective with light leak! So the end result of the shot could be very surprising - not something you could ever expect with a state of the art digital camera.