[Leica] [ot] holga meets diana

[Guy Bennett <guybnt@idt.net>]

>Uh, Guy,
>
>With all due respect to your tongue-in-cheek humor, I should note that I
>have electrical tape all over my Holga to minimize the light leaks on
>the film. But it doesn't have any of the rangefinder patch flare
>problems that my M6 exhibits. On the other hand I end up prefocusing
>both of them most of the time: The Holga because I have to; The Leica
>because I can't see to coincide the rangefinder images in awkward
>lighting situations.
>
>Carl Socolow


carl,

i don't use tape (black or otherwise) on my holga, and the darned thing
still takes relatively decent pictures! in fact, they look so 'normal' that
i wound up buying a couple of dianas with the hopes of producing more
degraded, idiosyncratic photos. while even they are not as outlandish as i
had hoped, they are better than what i get out of the holga, but the dianas
truly leak light...

one evening, i loaded a diana with delta 3200 and went off to visit a
couple of friends. i was snapping some pictures in their dimly lit
apartment when my friend said: can i take a look at that camera? i handed
it to him and he proceeded to hold it under a bright lamp to get a better
look at it, which totally blew out the film.

i recently got a lomo camera - quite sophisticated compared to the dianas
and holgas. it has a glass 40mm f4 lens with a metal barrel. the lens has
distance marks, a depth of field scale, and the pictographs also used on
the d and the h (a head and shoulders, a full length figure, a mountain +
tree, etc). also, actual numerical shutter speeds are indicated (though the
shutter has to be 'cocked' using a lever protruding from the lens), along
with the usual pictographs of the sun, cloud, dark cloud, etc. i'm still
shooting my first roll so i can't yet say what the pictures will be like -
we'll see. one thing's for sure: i won't use tape on it! if i need sharp
pictures, i'll resort to my leica.

what ho!

guy