camera meet and greet

As you know I love my holga and will always be a holga girl at heart.  Recently though I expanded my arsenal of toy cameras to experiment, play, and hopefully realize again that I’m a holga girl.  I borrowed two cameras from Mom’s collection (she has lots of cool ones).  I borrowed a Brownie Hawkeye (far left) and the Lomo L-CA+.  Kodak put out a line of cameras called Brownies and the Hawkeye is just one version of these.  It takes 620 film which was made by Kodak so that you would be required to purchase their film and not go elsewhere.  620 film is actually the same size as 120, the spool is a slightly small that the 120 spool.  So in order to use the brownie I need to either respool film onto a 620 spindle, sand down a 120 spindle to fit, or as the developing lap to please please please not throw away the spool and return after processing.  I opted for the last option for my first run through with the Brownie and my lab was wonderful enough to save the spindle.  The results of the brownie were similar to the holga, its more of a different feel while shooting.  You get to look down into the camera to see what your aimed at which is kinda fun to figure out.  It has the same bulb mode as a holga which I made good use out of.  And I think this camera would/could make some amazing vertical panoramas.  I’ll have to explore that in the next roll I put through.
The Lomo LCA+(center camera) is a camera I have a little more experience with since Mom used to carry it around with her every where we went for a while.  It was one of the cam’s that initially even got me semi into photography.  They are made in Russia and have a wide angle glass lens.  Die hard toy camera people don’t consider lomo’s to be toy cameras.  In fact there is in a bit of a rift between the die hard plastic toy people and the lomo people.  But I digress.  I haven’t gotten through an entire roll of film in the Lomo yet, it takes 35mm so 24 pics takes a lot longer to go through than the 120 12 pics. 
The far right is my beloved Holga.  While playing with these other cameras I’ve built up some excitement about my holga.  I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder.  I have several things I want to try out and experiment.  One is going on right now.  I have my holga pointed at the night sky on a super long exposure.  Sitting at 30 min right now.  When I started there were clouds on the skyline glowing, but now they have gone away and it is very dark.  Hence the super long exposure.  Lately my biggest problem with my holga is that I’m not paying attention to the lighting and lots of my pics are under exposed.  This probably isn’t the best project to be working on when this is my biggest problem right now, but I couldn’t help it.  I was inspired.
Finally my Blue Ribbon Slim Camera.  This I bought my self for my birthday and is all plastic and very toy like.  It’s tiny which I like b/c I can throw it in my purse.  It is a wide angle like the lomo but should or could give me vignetting like the holga.  It’s a 35mm which I wanted so that I had something a lil bit cheaper I could play with.  I just finished my first roll of film today.  So back to the camera store I go…  I’m hoping for some cool pics to share on HLW. 
I still have the Fujifilm Instax Mini camera.  We use it occasionally.  We used it a lot when Ryker was first born.  And I have a couple ideas for future projects w/ this camera.  I just need to buy a ton of film if I get them underway.

That’s about the sum of it.  The cameras sit on a bookshelf in the living room while not in my purse.  Easy access for when inspiration hits.  Which fortunately has been a lot lately.  =)

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