Tales on Film

I bought this Original Diana on eBay. It really was a bargain I could not resist.

This Diana camera takes 120 film and has 3 lens opening; f/11, f/13 and f/19. It also has a bulb setting. Shutter speed is often variable due to manufacturing vagaries, and can vary from 1/200th to 1/30th of a second. As there is no shutter lock, it’s not rare that I take some multiple exposure pictures without even knowing it.

In addition to the ‘Diana’ labelled cameras, there are over fifty similar variants of the basic design, some of which may have been produced by other factories and/or manufacturers.

Several new production versions of the Diana camera are currently available as the Diana+ series, produced by Lomography.

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Once you start shooting analogue, it’s impossible not to come across Lomography. Most people then start buying a Holga LC-A, but I went for a Diana F+.

There is not much to say about this camera except that it is a toy camera produced nowadays according to the original design of the Diana toy camera from Japan. There are just 2 settings, you can adjust. You can choose between a shutterspeed which has been estimated between 1/30 to 1/100 sec or you can choose the Bulb setting. The lens has three settings being sunny, cloudy dark and pinhole. There are estimates for the apertures, they should be around f8, f11 and f16, but nobody is really sure.

There is a whole range of accessories for the Diana F+. I find that everything is very overpriced for what you get, but that is what happens when something like this becomes a hype. The Diana is not my favourite camera and I find it very hard to get decent pictures out of it. None the less I’ll keep on trying anyway, and maybe someday I will love this camera, for now it mostly sits on the shelf without film in it.

When I try to make a nice multiple exposure, I usually screw it up. Because I think too much what fits on the previous image.

It also happens that I totally forget that I wanted to make a multiple exposure picture and just shoot without advancing the film. Mostly, the result is much better than when I think about the image, the framing, …

Like, this picture for example, I was quite excited about seeing the zeppelin right in front of me that I totally forgot to advance the film in my Diana. So when it got developed I was quite surprised to see there were multiple zeppelins on the picture. And actually, I think that it turned out pretty good.