Selwyn College’s Community Education courses include “Photography and the Darkroom”, so I’ve spent the last five Monday nights there making picture magic.

This week, I took along the 3A Autographic Kodak Special. I’ve worked out how the camera functions, and that the shutter speed and aperture settings do seem to work (though I haven’t measured precisely). 

My teacher and I took some pictures with photo sensitive paper which I cut down to size and taped inside the camera in the darkroom. Using the rangefinder, we took a stab at focus, and took a 5 second exposure at f6.3 (I think)… Nothing. Doubling the exposure time yielded results, the negative image above is what comes out of the camera when the paper is developed.

Then, by using the negative for a contact print we get the positive. “In person” the scissors and ruler on the table are super sharp, I was delighted.


If you can’t get it fixed in time… Buy another?

I picked up a new Diana F+ clone today, Glow. It looks yellow on the lomography site, but it’s actually lime green and white. The flash unit looks a whole lot better on my Edelweiss camera too – because it’s white. 

The top of the camera has glow in the dark stars printed on it! Stars! Reminiscent of my tweenage days, when my ceiling was plastered with greenish glow in the dark stars.I’m delighted.

You can see the camera in this photo. it’s over to the left. Picture is me experimenting with the viewfinder that goes with the Diana fisheye lens and my cellphone. Fauxfisheye?

Fiji tomorrow, I’m just taking my cellphone and my new friend glowie. And a stash of film 🙂


Double exposure, Auckland late 2010. Diana Mini, kodak gold 200.

I upload all (or nearly all!) my lomo pictures to lomography.com, and it never ceases to surprise and delight me when people “like” photos I’m not fond of myself. Sadly, it makes me attribute them with much more value.