Who Wants To Test The Lomo LC-A 120 ???????????

I was looking at that basketball court shot again. Man is that good, no matter what camera took it.

If you look at the Lomo site the photos they use to market this camera (and the rest of the gear) are so poor. I think that is intentionally so the target market is not disappointed by their results. Deliberate lo-fi.
But, if they had a few shots like this thrown into the mix to show what can be done, I think that would expand their audience.

What is clear is that this camera shines with colour film (it seems that most of the lomo products do), fast film and careful technique. Colton, I'm guessing you braced it well when you took the pics?
I was using it in a more casual laissez faire fashion (as suggested by Lomo's marketing..) that is fine with cameras with a decent release, but here obviously not so.
It's still a MF camera and needs to be handled as such if you want pics like Colton's. If not, you get pics like mine! Don't let the size/weight fool you into thinking otherwise.
 
Swift1 said:
I just got my second roll back. This time with 2 blank frames, and again the 11th partially on the very end of the roll, and no 12th frame 🙁
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I just checked my two film strips, and while there is some uneven spacing none are close to overlapping, and both had 12 images.
 
Huss said:
I just checked my two film strips, and while there is some uneven spacing none are close to overlapping, and both had 12 images.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... both my rolls had huge spacing and I got 10.5 frames if I count the blank frames.
I'm pretty sure I've got the blank frame issue solved.
So because of ALS, I have to hold cameras in my lap to shoot, but with the LC-A 120 I can't physically press the shutter button enough to trigger the shutter, so I have been using a cable release and having an assistant trigger the shutter while I hold the camera.
It turns out that the cable release was the problem (sort of). The LC-A 120 seems to like some cable releases and others not so much.
Today, with no film in the camera, I tried it with 3 different cable releases. With the one I had been using, abut 1 in 6 tries the camera would sound like the shutter had fired but I could see that the shutter didn't actually open. With the 2nd cable release, the camera refused to do anything at all. The LC-A seemed to like the 3rd cable release because it worked perfectly while testing.

As for the frame spacing... I have no idea.
 
Did you use the cable release that came with the camera? One would think that that one would work. One would think..

As for the frame spacing issue, well it only shot 2 films with me, and two with you? So after 4 rolls it is starting to fail?
 
I finally got back my negatives just now. I need to scan them but the negatives seem fairly sharp. I used the supplied cable release for roughly half of the shots.

I had some irregular spacing on some of the rolls. Of the three rolls I got 12, 11, and 10 shots respectively.

I will post some scans as soon as I can. Hopefully this evening.
 
Hey Colton, could you use this item to help take pics? It is a trigger type mechanism that screws in to the tripod socket of the camera, then the cable release attaches to the shutter.
If so, I can ship it to you in honour of the pay it forward thread.

image_zpswjga1ogp.jpg
 
http://www.lomography.com/homes/pog...brand-film-causes-lost-frames-in-the-lc-a-120

Check out the above article entitled "Lomography-brand film causes lost frames in the LC-A 120"

I'll save you the click:

For the LC-A 120, paradoxically you’re better off avoiding the current Lomography-brand film. Why would I say this? What is the problem, and shouldn’t Lomography’s film be the perfect match for the LC-A 120?

I did some measurements and found that the winding mechanism of the LC-A is fixed, and based on the number of turns required at the take-up spool to move the film to the next position. This is (cough) a fundamental design flaw, as the number of turns depends on the thickness of the film/backing paper in use and there is nothing in the camera to adapt to it.

The problem with the Lomography film in its current (2015) form is that the backing paper is MUCH too thick. Before you even reach the first frame, the take-up spool diameter has increased so much that you overshoot the first position by half a frame. This is why people recommend lining up the START arrow to the left of the recommended position, so that the first frame will be reached at the correct point.

But unfortunately, that’s not enough to avoid problems. The take-up spool diameter is already too great by this point, so every time you advance to another frame it will move the film too far. You’ll see it on your developed negatives, and in the end you’ll reach the end of the roll with only 10 pictures taken.

If they had placed a roller against the edge of the film next to the exposure area, and measured the number of turns of that roller – there are in fact two such rollers already present, but they are not connected to anything – then the number of turns would not depend on film/paper thickness and would be reliable. Oh well, we live and learn.

What I also found, however, is that Fujifilm Provia 100F matches the predefined turning amounts of the LC-A exactly. You’ll get your full 12 frames, with perfect narrow gaps between each frame and no excessive winding on. I got similar results from other Fujifilm rolls, all of which share the same fine, thin backing paper. Clearly the LC-A 120 was calibrated with such film in mind, but the Lomography-brand film spoils the show with its thick backing paper.

Of course, I love the Lomography film – it just works perfectly. Sometimes I’ll just have to live with the lost frames. But most of the time, I’ll save it for my other 120-format cameras, and keep the rolls with thin backing paper for my LC-A 120.​

What kind of film were you using? The Lomo 800 only gave me 10 and 11 shots. The 100 B&W got 12.
 
Huss said:
Hey Colton, could you use this item to help take pics? It is a trigger type mechanism that screws in to the tripod socket of the camera, then the cable release attaches to the shutter.
If so, I can ship it to you in honour of the pay it forward thread.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if I would be able to use that. I would love to try though.
 
Swift1 said:
I used new Kodak Portra 400, and some expired Fuji Pro 400NPH.
Only the last roll of NPH had proper spacing, only because I cut nearly 3 inches off the paper leader.
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I read about the trick of cutting off the paper leader. Will have to try that.
 
Okay here are some of my pics from my second roll which was Lomo 800 CN film shot as ISO 100 by accident. The first roll looks pretty bad and the third roll is yet to be scanned. These are all tweaked in lightroom.



img147.jpg by David O, on Flickr

A bit of parallax error on this one and front focused but I still like it:

img151.jpg by David O, on Flickr

The lines at the top are from my scanner, don't know what is going on there. Pretty sharp pic IMHO:

img152.jpg by David O, on Flickr

Again lines from scanner:

img153.jpg by David O, on Flickr

I will post more when I manage to scan the other rolls. Thanks
 
ISO 800 shot at 100? 3 stops overexposed, and they still look ok. I like the last three, these are sharp but more importantly they are all interesting. I think the front focussed shot actually works better with the focus on the hand/dagger than on the face.
 
Huss said:
ISO 800 shot at 100? 3 stops overexposed, and they still look ok. I like the last three, these are sharp but more importantly they are all interesting. I think the front focussed shot actually works better with the focus on the hand/dagger than on the face.
Click to expand...

Thanks I should have mentioned they were pull-processed since I realized I set the ISO incorrectly.
 
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