Diana+ lomography camera overview

Merry Christmas to you all, and I hope you have a great new year! I had a very good Christmas, I got amazing presents and spent it with my family and friends. I'm leaving later tonight to visit Mons, Belgium to see my sister and her family. I thought I'd bid you farewell until after the new year by leaving you with one very exciting post!

Now, I don't know about you but I love photography. Despite only having owned one camera before in my entire life, I've always had a passion for the more artsy low-fi shots that are captured on film cameras. My camera I've always used is actually digital, and no amount of my crappy editing skills could get them to look as I wanted. So, I researched online and found the Diana+. And lo and behold, here it sits in my unwise hands.

This is the dreamer edition from urban outfitters.

It's a completely plastic camera, and there are many different editions of it to collect. I brought this one for £50. The Diana was first produced in the 1960's as a toy camera, but never took off and so stopped being made. However, in 2007 lomography began to produce them again and here we are. 

It has a 75mm lens, with 3 different focus settings. You can twist the lens and pop it off, allowing you to take pinhole shots (you have to change the setting on the underside of the 'lens') or to use one of the different lenses such as wide-angle and fish-eye available from lomography.com.  I personally want to try these, as they offer a lot of variety and alternation between the different sort of photos you can take and the effects you can give.  The shutter button is on the side of the lens (left hand side below the finger in the photo) and you simply pull it down and hold it for as long as you'd like the exposure to be. 

Underneath on the underside of the lens, there are 4 different settings: cloudy, semi-cloudy, sunny and pinhole to let the lens allow different amounts of light in. 

On-top of the lens to the right of the shutter, there is a B or N setting. N is for normal daytime, and B is for low-light or night time. 

On the back of the camera, there is a small section to decide whether you want to use 16 small shots, or 12 large panorama shots in a roll. This can be changed after the roll is finished. The camera has a textured effect. You also have the viewfinder at the top, although it's fairly inaccurate. On the bottom of the camera you have a lock or unlock switch, which allows you to slide the back off or lock it into place. There's also a hole for a tripod to screw into. You can also buy the 35mm film back and the instant-back from lomography.

The camera (the dreamer model I have) comes with a white plastic neck strap, which is a bit cheap and nasty looking so I'm tempted to cut it off and invest in a prettier one later on. It also comes with a shutter holder clip, so if you're doing a long exposure photo you don't have to hold it down as it can become harder the longer you hold it for. I've yet to work out how that works! It's capable of  having a flash too, and there's a two prong hole for it to slot into. 

Overall, I am in love with this camera. Yes, I brought the wrong film so it's probably gonna be black and not working. Yes, it took me about 2 hours to work out what to do. And yes, it's plastic. But, that is what makes it great. 

I hope you enjoyed this review. Please comment if  you'd like to see more ( way more interesting!) posts about my Diana and film photography. Thanks for reading and stay safe at new years.