The Plastic Lens ~ Words » 35mm Diana

35mm Back for the Diana +

Cameron — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:18:36 +0000

received my last order from the Lomographic Society on Friday; a 35mm back for the Diana + cameras, with most of the English instructions missing due to a misprint. I had also ordered a Diana + Edelweiss edition that was broken (lens assembly completely detached from the body, dangling by the wires for the flash) before I even got it out of it’s box. I will be interested to see how the LSI address my concerns, but I have been feeling that the business side of the lomography community/family has changed from being customer focussed to being totally profit driven now, with a good deal of cynicism thrown in for good measure. A few of my friends and online contacts would argue this has been the case for a while but I have held out until recently, believing (hoping) they still cared more about analog photography and the people still practicing it than just the money…
Oh well. Because my manual had missing information, I had to ask online for the missing pages (thanks cannibal.animal) as I didn’t want to bust anything when fitting the 35mm back. I thought some people might appreciate a visual walkthrough of the process of fitting the back to the Diana + camera. Kai’s ‘out of the box’ review of the 35mm kit which I mention in the video can be found here.

Mounting the 35mm Diana + back from artpunk on Vimeo.

The 35mm Diana + Result

Cameron — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 03:39:17 +0000

Well, I have had my first roll developed from the 35mm film in the Diana + experiment and have learned a couple of things:

1. I needed to wind on a little more than I first thought for at least the first half of the roll, perhaps one & 1/4 turns of the winder rather than the (approx) one turn that I first suggested (I corrected my original video tutorial post) – having said that, the resultant overlaps produced some interesting results.
2. I must remember that the exposed area is cropped top and bottom from my 120 exposures, and should compose my shots accordingly.

I found the results quite interesting and will definitely be doing this again. Click on the thumbnails to see more (& larger) shots from the first 35mm Diana roll.

35mm Film In Your Toy Camera

Cameron — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:41:28 +0000

Here is a fairly straight forward tutorial video showing how to simply adapt a toy camera (a Diana + in this case) that usually takes 120 (medium format) film to take 35mm film. Even though I’m using 35mm in my Diana + here, this should be achievable in just about any medium format toy camera you might have. Why do it? Because you can and because you get some cool image to the film edge looks! addit: (see some resultant photos from the first roll).
To work out how far you need to advance the film there is a handy guide at photon detector – remember if you have the 4×4 mask in your Diana + the turns will be for the Diana, Agfa Isoly guide. Without the mask (i.e. with 6 x6 exposures) work off the principle that you will need to advance a little bit more between frames. As the film is wound on you need to turn the advance a little bit less each time as the film bulks up on the take up spool. * Please note that my estimation of 3/4 to 1 full turn as stated in the video is inaccurate and will result in overlap – with a traditional Diana and a Diana + with the 4 x 4 mask in work on 1.1 turns at the beginning of the roll reducing this to approx 0.8 turns towards the end of the roll. In a Diana + without any mask (ie 6 x 6 exposures) work on 1.6 turns going down to 1 turn. Also, I needed to tape the leader of the 35mm film onto the take up spool, something not obvious or mentioned in this video (sorry). Have fun!

35mm Film In Your Toy Camera from artpunk on Vimeo.