Tricks for your lomo cam

Posted on 31 Jul 2010 - by Katkat In: film photography tutorial

Now that you have your lomo cam and you have browsed through a lot of amazing lomo pictures taken by other people, you must be excited to start clicking away and get a masterpiece out your lomo cam. As a starter, don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t happen that way. Lomography is a learning process, a developing art. Before I took pictures with my Vivitar UWS cam, I read through film photography books to get the basic knowledge of films, exposure, camera angles, etc. I didn’t understand most of it eg. the shutter or aperture size, the suggested camera angles, use of filter lenses, etc. But it still helped me understand why my pictures turned out in such a fashion. And thanks to my lomo friends, they were able to enlighten me and suggest me tips. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a simple point-and-shoot camera person.

A lomo cam is not like an slr where you can manipulate the settings of your camera to get the most amazing effect for your picture. Lomo is more like a game of chance. Out of 24 exposures, you’ll be lucky to get 2-3 great pictures. And many times, the most funky or weirdest picture is the most creative and interesting. To err is creative!

For the Vivitar UWS, here are tricks you can do:

1. The Flare shot – frame a picture by pointing your camera towards the sunlight. You’ll get the ring of the sunlight in your picture.

2. Vignette – any process by which there is loss in clarity towards the corners and sides of an image (wikipedia). It is usually due to underexposure using too low ISO or shooting in an overcast day.

3. Double exposure – I’ve never been successful with double exposure with my UWS but for my BBF (blackbird fly), it was easy to do double exposure. This method takes 2 shots on the same film. Take 1 shot then before winding that crank to advance that film, click another shot.

4. Ghosting – i haven’t had this result with my viv yet but from the forums it is simply called lens flare, where it is caused by light reflecting inside the camera between the lens and the film. Happens especially during a sunny day.

These tricks are not strict rules but they’re just fun things to do with your cam. A wise suggestion from many viv UWS lomographers is: shoot from the hip! You’ll get a better frame than shooting standing up. In addition to I would like to say, do not photoshop your pictures! It would defeat the purpose of lomography. Happy clicking!