Styled kind of like an old Kodak Brownie, Lomography’s first-ever video camera, the Lomokino, shoots video on ordinary rolls of 35mm film with a little crank of a handle. Capable of squeezing up to 50 seconds of footage onto a standard 36-frame roll, the finished results are a real throwback to ye olden days.
Given it’s a Lomography product, it’s a fun little device that’s the perfect thing to toss in your bag for slightly off-beat videos. Available by itself for $US79, or with a LomoKinoScope (sort of like a Viewmaster, which you insert the negatives into), it’s on sale now.
Over to the tech details, and the Lomokino has a 25mm lens with 1/100 shutter speed. Aperture can be controlled manually by sliding a switch on the front between f/5.6-f/11, and to focus there’s a button on the side for those 0.6m close-ups (otherwise, the standard focus is 1m-infinity).
On top, there’s a hotshoe adaptor for plugging flashes into (a Fritz the Blitz flash, at £55 ($85), and £9.90 ($15) adaptor kit works best as the flash can be shot simultaneously while cranking the exposure handle), and there’s also a tripod mount if the Paul Greengrass effect isn’t desired.
To process the roll once finished, it can be taken to any processing lab (as long as you explain that the negatives shouldn’t be cut), but I’d suggest using one of Lomography’s LomoLabs (which you can also use through the mail, if there’s not one near you). Movie-editing software is needed to stitch the 144 images together; something like iMovie; Windows Movie Maker or Final Cut is perfect. Read up on the post-production notes over here, for more. From there, Lomography’s recommending Vimeo as the best place to upload your vids to, but if you prefer relegating them to the depths of some hidden folder on your PC, that’s OK too.
I’ve had the good fortune to have played around with one for the last week, so expect my review tomorrow over on Giz UK, film fans. Otherwise check out an explainer video on the Lomokino, below, and an example of the film footage you can expect, at the very bottom of this post. [Lomokino via Gizmodo UK]