What do you think of Lomography ?

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Just wondered what you think of Lomography ? I must admit I quite like using basic cameras but unlike Lomography I like to try and get the best out of them factoring in their limitations and strengths (I'm not saying I always do ! ) and some of my favorite shots have not been the best technically but do invoke memories of the time they were took, what was happening and where I was. Looking at Lomography shots a lot of them are very appealing and very artistic but as I'm a total skinflint I could never justify just randomly shooting off film and hoping I get some thing appealing. What do you think ?
 
Like Martin Parr's and Diane Arbus' photographs, I can see the point without liking the results.
 
Never used a Lomography camera, but I did notice a 3-pack of 120 400 ISO colour film for a tenner in Boots today (and BOGOHP too). Any good? The only Lomography film I've shot before was a redscale, not really any indicator of quality!
 
The slide film is awful. The lady grey bw is fine, as is the colour print film and red scale.
I can't get into the stressing and damaging film idea that was all the rage once.
 
Never used a Lomography camera, but I did notice a 3-pack of 120 400 ISO colour film for a tenner in Boots today (and BOGOHP too). Any good? The only Lomography film I've shot before was a redscale, not really any indicator of quality!
Posted my reply at the same time.
 
Lomo film isn't bad. I think the normal stuff is rebadged Kodak. I've used it. Don't like it as much as superia though.

I had a lomo phase using a random box of crap cameras. Don't think I'd repeat the experiment!

I did um and ah about one of the lomo brand cameras but got the Fuji 120 beast instead as it was cheaper. Lomo has led to a big resurgence in film so I'm all for it.
 
What do I think of Lomography?

What do I think?

In terms of the Lomography ethos, I'm not terribly keen on randomly introducing weird colours and effects, but I do like the promotion of experimentation with film.

In terms of emulsions, I would no longer risk using any Lomography film as I've had some issues with backing paper, as evidenced below:




As for their cameras, I haven't used many of them, but the Lomo LC-A 120 is great. It's like a cheaper, more portable, consumer-oriented Hasselblad SWC. Although there are some limitations in terms of manual controls, the very wide angle lens (in 6x6 terms anyway) is a solid performer for the price point. It's so easy to use and carry too.





 
I've shot an Olympus XA2 compact since 1981. It cost, if Alzheimer hasn't completely done for my marbles, I think just shy of £90, with its A11 flash and 'presentation' box. It was, in the shop ISTR more expensive than the 'entry-level' OM10 sat on the shelf next to it. It was one of the most expensive 'consumer' cameras of it's era; there was little in the shop any more expensive you couldn't swap lenses on, and an awful lot you could that were a heck of a lot cheaper..... it was NOT a low cost, low quality mass market camera..... just small.

Forty years on, and it GRATES when I see it describes as 'Lomo' on usually US based web-sites, for no other reason than they found one in a junk-shop for $5....

And here-in is the perversion..... thirty years ago, there were a few counter-cultures in photography; My Grandfather raved about his Kodak Retinette... it was a 35mm camera, he could use this 'cheap' movie film, and get more than 12 pictures to a roll, more they could be in COLOUR! Admittedly no one ever got to see them because they were on slide film, and the projector bulb had always blown if any-one ever stuck around long enough for him to set up the projector screen, and Gran hadn't moaned that he was pulling the curtains down.... if in deed, he hadn't been side tracked by that, and spent most of the day looking for a 3/8th's BA screw to fix the rail, instead... but I detract.....

On average there was about one camera per household. 35mm was revered for the 'quality'; Kids may have been given a plastic 120 cartridge brownie to play with at Christmas, or take photo's on the school-trip. The average household though took less than forty photo's a year, and films could be left in cameras almost decades between photo's! The main family camera only coming out on the main family holiday or celebration, and Dad' usually spending hours setting up a 'posed' picture for it.

110, taking the market by storm in the 1970's offered 'cheap' film, that you people could afford to be less precious about, and cheap cameras, they could let the wife and kids play with... and probably has a greater contribution to popular mass photography than anything until widgetal and camera-phones came along.

But gave rise to the 'Just shoot it' counter-culture. Tale photo's see what you get, anything is better than nothing. Meanwhile.... and I think that psychedelic music and associated recreational pharmaceuticals are not entirely blame-less.... but as counter-point to the enormous number of classically posed people pictures like wot Dad took, 'effect' became something ever so more aplauded.... and we saw the ride of the Cokin filter, with prism effects and rainbows and stuff, all over-laid opon what were usually other side ho-him phorto's.... and the 'cheap' wobbly plastic lens light-lean prone 'kiddie' cameras that gave these sort of effects randomly and without filter started to get interest as the aberrations were 'sold' as 'art'.. and 'Just Shoot it' philosophy encompased this, and we got what was variousely known as 'Serendipity-Photo' or 'Punk-Photography'.. take a cheap talentless camera, go shoot, and see what you get... then call that 'effect'... and say it was your intend all along!!!!

1990's.... the Berlin wall fell... these sort of alternative movements had grown and as a uni-student at the time, I saw gain great reverence... sort of akin to when my 16 year old lad came home in ripped jeans and trucker belts from the Boutique in town, and tried using Nirvana 'Come-as-you-Are' lyrics to explain why and 'old crusty' who'd gone clubbing in the ripped jeans that were the only clean thing in the laundry pile at the time, 'wouldn't get it maa-aa-aan" but still..... Post Thaturite ideals of 'stick a badge on it and flog it to the masses' prevailed, and former soviet planned economy factories, under threat of closure from EU environmental legislation, got bought up by Prague students on the make, and their products given a huge 'added value' from a 'LOMO' lable...... hmmmmm

Which got so perverted from the initial punk-photo-ideals of just shooting.... that the high end ultra expensive Olympus XA2 that was, in 1981 offered as being as convenient and pocketable as a 110 instamatic, but offering 35mm rivaling image quality.. SUDDENLY gets derogated to being the equal of a plastic rusian Brownie copy wi9th an unprenounceable name, even is you can translate the crylic charecters!!!!

What do I think of Lomo!?!

I have to say, that as a marketing ploy, its effing fan-fooking-tastic! Taking effectively value-less party cracker ribbish made in the former soviet union, transferring manufacture to china and lowering QC levels even further, and then selling it to the world with a BADGE at a 'premium' HAS to be a stroke of pure genius!!!

It is remarkeable... truly astounding even! WHY didn't I think of that thirty years ago when I was at college instead of trying to flog fancy pad-locks for motor-bike front discs!!!!

As a movement? Perversion layered on perversion really!!! Like No1 Son trying to convince me that a pair of over-priced ripped jeans and trucker chains "I is wot I where ma-an!" and blowing my hi-fi speakers putting on the latest "Dance of Death" album by that oh-so-cult rock-band Iron-Maiden (shrug!) turning the bass full up and then the volume..... and trying to tell me that I'm too old to understand...... maybe I am.... millenials!?! I really just DONT get them.... especailly when they try re-inventing stuff from my yoof, and giving it a twist......

I went to a party not long ago, and the kids had taken over the Hi-Fi.... they were the only ones that could program the play list!!!! I was subjected to "Fight for your Right" by the Beastiue Boys....... the computer-programmer who'd put this on, and the teen-age relative who had turned it up, were rather aghast, me, old crumblie, was SINGING ALONG! Well, it was sort of the sound-track to my 5th year at school, and the 12" single.... yeah, how many remember them? Go on hands up, show your crumblie-ness!!! Was passed round the playground to get scratched to high heck between mocks for us all to make a low rent copy off on Boots own compact-cassette, over the top of last weeks top 40 off Radio1!!! However.. I am not sure who's shock was greater... these 'Kids' that I could sing along to the song... or mine.. that they revered such tripe as a 'Classic'.... yeah.. well it was an anthem, yup I suppose it did make a statement of its time.... but it was never exactly a GREAT, was it?

Thinking back... I was a little surprised when I was about 12 and got my own record player, and asked by my Gran to record all her old records to tape so she could listen to them again, coming accross Eddie Cochran 'Come-on-Every-body'... and I suppose she had a similar moment of wonder that I so liked that bit of pop-art from her yoof... but still.....

THAT is I think where LOMO leads us...... to me it IS a fantastic bit of marketing over manufacture.... beyond that, as a movement... well? It is whatever you would like it to be... whether that';s an over priced Holga or a cheap Olympus XA2.. whether its the effect of light leaks and rainbow lenses, or the fantastic resolution and reproduction of a 120 roll film Lubitel....

The brand, and the movement and the millenial geek-nicks 'discovering' this 'old-fashioned analogue photo stuff' probably deserve some consideration for helping keep halide film alive and in the popular conscious...... what they do with it? That remains much more debateable.......

But, I dont think that 'LOMO' can even be defined.. it's an amorphous blob in photography, that is shaped by who-ever whenever to be an excuse for whatever interests them at the time.. as such, some of what comes out of it is interesting, some thought provoking, whether its any good or not, though remains in question, and 'just' beause some-one has slapped a brand name on it doesn't mean its going to be... in fact, most often where thats all there is to it, it very much isn'tt.

Good photo's remain good photo's, however they were made....
 
My views are very much aligned with @skysh4rk's, in that I appreciate the promotion of using, experimenting, and indeed otherwise keeping money flowing, with film. I wouldn't use Lomo film or cameras personally, it's just not my thing, and I'd far sooner spend the money on good film and spend the effort on the photograph I really like - which personally doesn't align with the results that Lomo cameras produce.
 
I didn't know you needed the right beard, is mine the right one ? Taken by my 4 year old grandson on one of those new fangled filmless cameras. I don't want to look like an idiot as I have the wrong beard ! ( before anyone else says it I prefer to look like an idiot because I am an idiot !)

BEARD.JPG
 
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Sorry Brad, but it's got to look more like the one Henry 8th and George 5th had, and preferably be a chestnut brown colour to qualify for full Lomo Hipster status, although wearing a lumberjack shirt might help with things! ;)
 
I'm a big fan of using 'toy cameras' for more interesting results, particularly the use of quadroscopic camers like a Nishika N8000 or Nimslo 3d to create gifs using differing perspectives. Think it's a nice modern use of a camera that otherwise is useless printing wise.
 
On the one hand, anything that promotes people having fun with 'analogue' cameras in 2018 has to be good for (at least) the short-term future of film.

On the other the whole thing, thought up originally by a couple of marketing students, was hype-driven right from the start. Back then, film was still mainstream, but their bright idea was to sell the old Lomo LC-A for a heavily inflated price together with membership in the 'Lomographic Society':

http://cameras.alfredklomp.com/lomography/

The defects of the camera (I'm old enough to remember when you could buy these for £30 from Zenit dealers) were dubiously promoted to proto-hipsters as features consistent with the lo-fi approach. When someone tried some 'grey market' exports of LC-As from Russia, where they will still cheaply available, he got a memorably theatening letter:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010428071306/http://www.geocities.com/lomojoe/letter.html

"It is true that meanwhile our friends Putin and Klebanov (ex director of Lomo) are the leading people in Russia and it is true that we and our Russian friends do not like our business to be disturbed."

(Yes, that Putin: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7007160.stm ).

Now of course they have moved beyond flogging LC-As, though you can still buy one from them (currently made in China) for £264. That's not only much more than the Cosina CX-2 it copies or the Minox that inspired the Cosina, but also more than (say) a Nikon F100 or a decent screwmount Leica. They also sell an updated Lubitel TLR for £289, which would buy you a nice Rolleicord. So, a nice business to be in. Their film prices are quite reasonable, though.
 
I think one of the benefits of Lomography is bringing people like me into photography.
I saw the term and thought WTF? Then thought 'hmmmm cheap, interesting, photos' - then I seemed to miss part of the point of the branding and started buying, and experimenting with, cheap analogue cameras. I've recently spent as much as £25 on an Exa (!) but most of my cameras have been less than £15, and I've only got one that won't work (a Lubitel 2 with a shutter fault) - but most importantly I'm really having a ball! (As well as learning a lot about various aspects of photography) All thanks to that one word.
 
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I quite like Lomography for a few reasons.

Their shops are perhaps the model that every post-internet photography shop should follow. Boutique, knowledgeable and they actually put photos on the walls.
Their Instax cameras are more interesting than Fuji's offerings
They sell Kodak Ultramax/Gold/Procolor 800 re-packaged as Lomography 800 when Kodak themselves don't and giving us a much cheaper high speed colour film alternative to Portra 800.
 
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