The Marathon Camera

I said in a previous blog that I wasn't much a fan of Lomography cameras. I should rephrase that. I'm not much a fan of Lomography cameras... unless they do something really quite interesting. Now that isn't to say they aren't all interesting in one way or another. Lomography has done a fairly good job at putting out one camera with one specific purpose. So when a camera came out who's sole job was to go wide. My interest was piqued.

I'm a late comer to this camera. I understand that. It isn't that I had intentions of jumping right on this either. There were more important things to buy. I mean when you can pick up a QL17 Giii for $15 (more on those cameras in another blog) it is hard to say no. However the Christmas season came around and I found myself wondering what I could want for Christmas. My film fridge was already packed to the brim, and my camera closet was close to topped off. I could fit one more in, one small guy. The Lomography La Sardina camera.

Image courtesy of Lomography.com 2011

For those living under a rock I'll fill you in with some knowledge juice. The La Sardina is a camera from Lomography. Released in June of 2011, it features a wide angle 2

2mm lens. Fixed f/stop of around 8, and a fixed shutter speed of 1/100th of a second. Pretty standard fare for Lomography. It also comes in 10 different color schemes. You read that correctly, 10. Could you imagine of Canon or Nikon did the same thing? Why that would be almost as crazy as... well Pentax. They started with 4 colors, all based on sardine cans and featuring fish of some sort. Then they added the brass editions. Two cameras made of... you guessed it. Brass. And most recently the pattern edition cameras. Same camera, only features inspired designed such as houndstooth. Mine is a pretty green with a boat on the back.

Image courtesy of Lomography.com 2011

Lucky for me, I got it. But in all honesty wasn't sure how to use it. That isn't to say I didn't know an f/stop from a bus stop (photography humor) but more where it would fit in with my shooting style. Too wide for street, doesn't let in enough light for indoors, it seemed to best be fit in places as obscure as the camera. So I grabbed a roll of very expired film, Ilford XP2 to be exact. I had no idea how this film was stored. I grabbed it from a flea market for free. It had a nasty crease coming out of it but it loaded up just fine and I thought to myself "Lomography, that's why."

I took a quick drive into the rural area near where I live. It's strange how quickly around here it goes from metropolis, to suburbs, to nothing. Getting a feel for this camera is like asking Mario Andretti to get a feel for a Geo Metro. It weighs nothing, the shutter provides zero feedback. I actually had to open the back of the camera and test fire a few times to make sure the shutter actually fired. Side note on that, make sure the lens is extended and locked into position or the shutter won't fire. While the collapsable lens is cool, it is kind of gimmicky. The viewfinder is rather poor as well and serves more to poke your retina than to let you compose.

Nate Matos 2011

And when I got out there it felt even worse. Like I was holding nothing, nothing seemed to look right in the viewfinder. I was bummed, aren't these camera's supposed to spark creativity? Make you look at the world in a different way? So far I wasn't convinced.

Nate Matos 2011

But I used the cameras strengths as my own and looked for things I wouldn't normally be able to capture. Things that were far apart, things that were alone. Things that stretched far and wide. And it started to come together. I was getting better at anticipating how things would look and feel through the wide eyes of this camera. Slowly this camera became a joy to use. I was getting low, high, close, far (and any distance that isn't covered by those four terms). Snapping away freely without a care in the world as to what would come of it. This was what Lomography was all about. Sure the viewfinder is a load of shit, and I'd feel more satisfaction from stubbing my toe than pressing the shutter. But it wouldn't matter in the end. Because the thing to take away was I had a fun time using this camera.

Nate Matos 2011

I got the photos back from the developer and they were toast though. The camera had torn through the sprockets in many places, developer had stained the images leaving weird sponge like impressions. Some of the images were so bad the lab refused to even scan them. So I did it at home. These images in this blog are straight off the camera, no removing of lint, cleaning up, sharpening, contrast etc. The only post processing I did was applied the sepia filter. As it fits Lomography styled images really quite well.

In the end, this is a strange camera. And yet one I see myself using quite often. It is fairly small, as the video shows roughly the size of an iPhone. So I don't feel burdened throwing it into the camera bag and bringing it out every once and while. It isn't a camera that asks for much in return. Just a roll of film every so often, a tap of the shutter, and a warm smile when you see the images it creates.