thirdeye photography: Lomo Instant gets Kickstarter Backing

Lomo Instant gets Kickstarter Backing

With 30 days to go, Lomography has exceeded all its expectations with over 200K pledged on a 100K required funding on Kickstarter. That is a resounding cheer for analogue photographers but the biggest winner has to be Fujifilm, the only remaining instant film maker on the planet. The consumables don't cost much, which at US$1 buck a print, it makes for good memories.

The Lomo Instant Camera is a generic Fuji Instax Mini as it uses the same type of mini instant film but it goes one step further by offering a choice of clip on lenses for the camera that gives you fish eye and portrait angle shots. The colored gel filters are not going to be much of a hit for me, at least in a traditional sense but hipsters will no doubt double down on them.

Long exposure is included if you want to get creative but you have been warned as this is essentially a bulb mode for instant photography. Get the exposure wrong, and you'll wind up having an overexposed pile of goo.

To be fair, I think the portrait lens is a great inclusion but the fish eye is pure rubbish. Then again, Lomo intends to sell the camera kit within the ballpark of US$150 for the camera that comes complete with a wide angle lens. This bodes well for photographers who want a choice and can ante up to the portrait lens clip on as an accessory.

Shutter controls are pretty limited, just at one speed, 1/125 sec. The Mini Instax film is rated at ASA 800. The only way to control the exposure is through the aperture setting.

But my main beef with this system is the sheet film size. It is small. Probably not as tiny as the first generation Zink prints but close. This means the instant film format isn't suitable for scenic, architecture or even street photography for that matter. It is a format meant for having fun with, shooting friends and family and the family pet. There is no macro capability either, so it would be a hassle to shoot anything smaller than a canary. Size wise, it's not much bigger than the Fujifilm instax mini cameras though I must add that it does bear some resemblance to Lomo's Belair series of cameras in terms of design. The Belair X6-12 has a Fuji Instax wide attachment to allow you take larger size instant pictures but from the initial test samples offered by users, only the 90mm lens seems to perform up to expectations. So if you gotta have that camera, then I suggest you wait for the Lomo Instant which should be made available to users all over the world in 2015.