diana + test report

I became the geek that I am by others assuming that I would be interested in things primitive and plastic and telling me about what they have found – so I am not so much a source but the cheapo primitive photographic version of the Utne Reader – a clearing house.

I had heard about the new Diana + but thought it an affectation, what coming from Lomo, and decided that having the real thing I could do without it.

I did want questions answered though and no one was forth coming with them.

I wanted to know if the images were biased toward the Holga or Diana. If there were 16 small images or 12 large ones, if it had the Diana fog or the Holga fall off.

The people I knew with one – from the Macmannie WGAS paroled writing grad through Nance’s deep extra cover – chose to ignore me.

The misplaced Tanzanian was flaunting his while I was at Sewanee, saw no images though, but the last straw was when some BFA student brought one into Manipulated Pretensions. It wouldn’t be long before photo hating –albeit users of the latest in high tech digital cameras - fibre grads would find a justification for having one.

I bought one the next day – no BFA scum is going to out geek me!!!!

It came over packaged but looking remarkably like the Diana of old with modifications for the younger generation “N” instead of “I” pictograms as well as distances, options for the old puny Diana neg or the new holga like size and the new notorious pinhole setting.

Keeping to my rule of finding film as bad as the camera I am using got some outdated Fortepan 400 from the camera shop and went out making snaps.

It is a pain to load in comparison to both Dianas and Holgas. In an attempt to not have fat rolls the area where the spools go is fiddly as a notch from the base has to go through the piece that holds the film in place. It has to be perfect before the back will shut and in the frozen tundra of the north with gloves it was quite slow. There were no fat rolls, however, the camera is harder to wind on – there is a definite resistance. I am torn about this for it means that the camera doesn’t move to the next image simply by my carrying it about like the old Diana but I did develop callouses.

It doesn’t leak light – I used no tape and no fogging nor the old Holga thumb print.

I was looking for a camera which had definite f stops something that the Holga doesn’t have, that work. Changing apertures on the old Diana would result in fogged images. I was also looking for the Holga clarity fall off.

It was a mauzy day on my first outing but a lot of snow. I treated the camera as if it were the original Diana – making snaps on the sunny setting. Everything was horrendously underexposed – images that would have been fine with the original Diana were not there at all. The only image that made it was one with a pronounced shadow and even that was only barely printable.

Reading a Maldito blog out of Tennessee, it was stated that maybe the f-stops were off and more closed down than they stated so I did the unthinkable. Pretending that I was a real photographer I used a light meter to measure the scene then bracketed.

The second outing was during a bright sunny EV 15 day, still mountains of snow, I took it to Lake Michigan to give it a work out.

-20c day only exacerbated the problems with loading and unloading but developing the images they were all fine. Funny thing bracketing between sunny and cloudy bright didn’t really show that much of a difference.

I like the camera, I like the images they are smaller – barely – than the Holga but have the Holga fall off I was looking for. Even better at close range there is the circle vignette. I like - even though my fingers don’t – the stiff wind on as there will be no unintentional overlap – been carrying it in my bag for a fortnight now and the frame hasn’t budged.

Although it is double the price of a Holga and still think it an affectation – especially now that ‘designer’ models are being made – I would choose he Diana + over the Holga.

I also like that the viewfinder is directly over the lens making it easier to compensate for parallax, i simply move the camera up a bit.

I am not all that wowed by the pinhole as no information was given about where to begin exposure wise – tried it twice and there was no image. Also don’t like it as I fear that the aperture ring will slide from sunny to pinhole without me noticing – obsessively compulsively check it as I don’t want to have happen with it what happened in Petty Harbour with the bulb setting Holgas – moved to bulb without me noticing it. I notice a looseness already with the bayonet that holds the lens on when not using the pinhole although I have only taken the lens off three times.

This is a relief for while the images from this don’t look like tradition Diana snaps – which varied from camera to camera anyway – it means that I don’t have to hoard my old Dianas. It may mean that for those snobs amongst us the traditional Diana price may drop on e-bay.

My frugal ways initially saw $50 as a bit much but inflating 1960’s prices the original would have been about the same.