The advantages of plastic
Last year I spent a lot of time looking for a Diana camera, -one of those old bluegreen plastic things that you have probably seen countless times at flea markets, yet never given much thought. Once I had decided that I needed one, I couldn’t find one anywhere and after a few weeks of intense hunting I placed an ad in an online photo magazine. The response was quick and I got my plastic camera and payed way too much for it, which was fine because it still came to very little money. Plastic is not expensive.
Diana cameras exist under dozens of different names. Mine is called Snappy. On the second hand market, the ones that are actually named Diana usually cost a lot more than the ones called for instance Windsor, Crown or Dories. This is because the Dianas are considered the originals, -hence the higher collector value. Personally I believe that one of these isn’t more original than the other and that they are collectively referred to as Diana cameras simply because whoever first started using one of these old toys to take artsy soft “serious” photos happened to own one that was imprinted with the name Diana.
In any case you can get some very appealing results with one of these things. So far I have only used mine to take a few test rolls, but the results seem pretty good. For some reason every photo I have taken with this camera has been perfectly exposed, which is a bit of a miracle since there is only one shutter speed and I have no idea what that is. The camera comes with no less than three aperture settings: sunny, cloudy and partially cloudy. So far it seems that when using 400iso film, these settings are actually very accurate. There is also a bulb-setting and a nice focus indicator where you can guesstimate the distance. And of course it’s beautiful to look at as well, which is important.
People who use Dianas also tend to gravitate towards the Holga, which is another medium format plastic camera. Holgas aren’t nearly as charming as Dianas tho. First of all they aren’t really toy cameras, -they are just very cheap plastic cameras that are made new in china to cover the huge demand for old plastic cult objects such as the Diana. The Diana holds a great many advantages over the Holga: They look better and the photos are softer. With the Holga the photos you get are just slightly annoyingly blurry. It just looks as if the photographer isn’t very talented. With a Diana the photos are just that much softer to make it look as if it was done on purpose. The Holga is also more prone to light leaks than the Diana and it has the viewfinder off to one side as opposed to in the middle on the Diana. This makes it more difficult to get a straight horizon with a Holga. Symmetry becomes difficult. And the Holga film advance doesn’t really work well at all so the film spools need to be padded with folded pieces of paper in order to get at least some film tension. Finally, the Diana gives you 16 frames on a roll of 120 film and the Holga only 12. This is because each Diana frame is slightly smaller than the full width of the film so you get 4 extra frames of blurry plastic delight to each roll.
The Holga does however hold a few things over the Diana: The shutter tends to produce a lovely dark iris-effect like you might see in early silent movies. Also, if you want to include the film edge numbers in your finished print the Holga, being a 6×6cm format camera, gives you these numbers right outside the edge of your photo, whereas the Diana with it’s smaller frame size just over 4×4cm, gives you a thick black border between the edge of the photo and the frame numbers running along the side of the strip of film. The Holga is also higly customizable due to the fact that new cameras that can be cannibalized for parts are easily obtained at a low cost.
Personally I prefer the Diana-style camera. The photos just look better and it’s easier to use. I’m hoping to come across a few extra copies since there is some individual difference from camera to camera and the photos from one Diana may look better than the photos from another. Also it would be interesting to try and build a Holga-style shutter into a Diana to get more of the previously mentioned iris-effect while maintaining the allover soft dreamy look of the Dianas plastic lens. For this kind of dangerous plastic surgery, parts are needed. So the search for Diana continues.
Toycamera.com
Huskudu.com
Plastic surgery made easy
Holga Tune-up and Modifications
Given the fact that I live only a couple of hours drive from the actual factory, one would perhaps think that the marked would be flooded with used Hasselblad equipment. Not so. A lot of the equipment is very hard to come by and only finds its way onto the second hand marked once it is more or less worn out by the previous owner. You never come across any equipment that has once been bought new by the person who now wishes to sell it. Everything is bought used from someone who has bought it used from someone who… etc. And everyone wants to make a profit. Or at least make sure that they don’t lose any money on the deal even if they did drop their camera into a lake and had to dive down after it.