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Does this camera exist?
Sheep
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Anyone know of a digital camera that lacks the LCD viewfinder, color correction, auto zoom, exposure correction etc?
Basically a camera that is as analog/old school as possible but without actually transposing images to film?
Basically a camera that is as analog/old school as possible but without actually transposing images to film?
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Thing is, it's cheaper to produce a camera with some basic software to handle focusing and all that than it is to make a fully-manual camera, because you need to do a lot more work to hook all those manual dials and such up to the software running on the camera.
You might want to look at an old SLR if your intention is to have full control over the composition of the picture on-camera. Or a cheap digital camera and a piece of tape to cover the screen, I guess.
Alternatively, stick with film and develop your film in a dark bag. Mostly for b&w though, but this looks to be a good starter resource for that: http://lefolly.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/diy-black-and-white-negative-developing/
I have a friend who shoots large format and does film developing in a dark bag; he says it's tricky the first time you do it but after that it's not hard at all.
You should be able to put pretty much any DSLR into manual mode. Pick one you can use your lenses on, then get the manual from the manufacturer's site and confirm that it has that feature.
I know with my Sony a200 you can turn off the manual focus, auto white-balance, auto-exposure, etc. I'm not sure if the LCD can even be used instead of the viewfinder.
You only need a dark closet, cover the door cracks or face away from them and load the film into the reel/tank. Once loaded and capped the tank is light tight, all development is done in normal light.
Now for printing, that's a different matter.
The only cameras I can think of that fit what you want without being a point-and-shoot (e.g. having SLR control ability, being digital, but lacking an LCD) are going to be the early digital cameras. We're talking the Kodac DCS100 from 1991, go go internal 3.5" HD and 1.3 Megapixels
Developing film is extremely easy. B/w film development is easier for beginners but even color developing is easy. I develop my film (color and b/w) at my kitchen sink and hang the negatives in the tub. I have a darkroom so printing is easy for me, but you can always just scan the negatives.
Get a wide angle prime lens, a 35mm f1.8.
Turn off the LCD (you can do this on most digital SLRs).
Instead of using auto-White balance, set it to a custom white balance. You can hue-green or purple and just leave it there. All pictures regardless of time of day or "auto color" will turn out with this white balance. Auto-color will go away.
Use full manual (or more easily, Aperature priority) to expose shots. You'll still have the digital read-out in the viewfinder, but it's up to you to use that.
I think if you tried that, you would find it very lomography-like.
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If she's interested in Lomography, but you don't want to do "traditional" lomography then a point-and-shoot would work perfectly fine. Unfortunately you wouldn't be able to show DOF (you can zoom in and step back to create a DOF'ish look with a point-and-shoot) but the lomo way is lo-fi happy accidents that you could apply in post processing.
I personally dislike digital so if it were me I wouldn't go that route but thats just me. I would go the traditional route so its actual Lomography, not something posing as such. Sounds snobbish, people can do what works for them, but I hate seeing digital images "spruced up" with Holga vignetting. Just buy the $30 camera and a roll of film and have fun
I think recent Canon cameras all have LCDs but they aren't normally used anyway except for example when I need to shoot from a hard-to-reach angle relative to my head. RAW will get rid of the color correction. Manual mode will mean setting your own exposures completely. DSLRs lenses don't auto-zoom, though they can auto-focus, which again you could turn off if you really want but DSLRs are not really designed for that since their viewfinders are a lot smaller so it'll be hard to eyeball the focus.
Edit: Just saw the update. But don't really know enough about lomography so the post is still based on initial requirements.
Edit2: Maybe something like this might help if you have a DSLR? http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/diana-lens-for-SLRs/. Or maybe this: http://content.photojojo.com/guides/ultimate-hipstamatic-guide/ I also recommend just reading their blog. They give a lot of DIY ideas for making interesting photos.
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If you go digital you're pretty much going to get an optically perfect photo with the only real problem being the possibility of noise, which isn't very charming. You can run a camera full-manual but typically the only thing you can mess up (besides bad composition) are exposure and focus, and exposure can be adjusted in post production anyway. That's different from a medium format toy camera, like a holga, where you get light bleed, chromatic aberration, color shifting and so on, and can't really do anything about it.
Yeah, I think if she's interested in lomography you should look into film and getting a dark bag to do your developing. It's cheap, about $100 for a bag, canister, and some big jugs of stuff to develop it all. You'd also have to figure out a way to scan the slides (as producing prints of film is where the real expense and space considerations of film come into play) but a decent slide scanner isn't that expensive, and you can space it out or have a local place run off a few prints if you have interesting shots. Personally, I think if you go digital for this it's too easy to lose the "fun" aspect of it by dicking around in photoshop to fake the natural effects of toy cameras.
Yes I just have to find the link for you! Hold on
Yeah, that's basically the entire point though. Light bleed, color shifting, etc are in part of the essence of Lomography.
I was basically hoping for some type of digital solution for ease of use in getting the pictures from a camera and onto a computer, but it looks like taking the old school route and scanning them in might be the best solution along with being the most authentic.