Of course, swapan is right about nostalgia driving some of the continuing enthusiasm for film, and this seems to be the case with the "lomography" aficionados. And it's not just the Russian lomo that seems to produce "pics so bad they're good." At the Lomography store in Hong Kong, you can also buy Holgas and Dianas.
The Diana originated as a trash camera from Hong Kong, and its "idiosyncrasies" have now been lovingly restored. One of the latest Diana models features a pin-hole mode. You can use medium format film, as I understand it, or buy a 35mm back.
"The Diana was first produced during the early 1960s in Kowloon, Hong Kong, by the "Great Wall Plastic Factory", and was sold under various labels (often just a different stick-on nametag). Most were given away as novelties or prizes at fairs, carnivals, or other public events. In addition to the 'Diana' labeled cameras, there are over fifty similar variants of the basic design, some of which may have been produced by other factories and/or manufacturers." Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_camera
It seems to me that it is purely nostalgia that drives enthusiasm for the results you get with this type of "toy" camera. If instead I take some blurry shots with a 1.3-meg cameraphone, they just don't cut it.
Some lenses or lens accessories from Lensbaby allow you to achieve pin-hole type effects with a digital camera, but to me Lensbaby products seem vastly overpriced -- my point really being that you can achieve these types of effects, including the lomo look, in software.
You can try pinholing with a digicam by making a tiny hole in a body cap, and I've tried this with a Nikon D70. You have to operate the cam in Manual mode, and I would advise a little bit of transparent film on the rear of the cap, to (try to) prevent dust entering and settling on the sensor.
As I understand it, the smaller the hole the better, generally, and you'll have to experiment with exposure times, EV setting etc. The best I managed was a hole melted through the cap with a needle heated with a cigarette lighter. One website suggests the hole is best laser drilled, but I have no idea how to do this. Any ideas?
I can't resist adding these additional remarks from Wikipedia on the Diana:
Quote:
The poor quality of the plastic meniscus lens results in generally low contrast, odd color rendition, chromatic aberration, and blurred images. Although these attributes are generally thought undesirable in a camera, some photographers have intentionally utilized these characteristics to produce photographs with interesting or artistic effects, led prominently by American Nancy Rexroth in her highly-influential 1976 series "IOWA," in which she claimed to have made many of the photographs with her eyes closed and none of them in the physical state of Iowa.