My Film Pal
Smena/Cmeha 35 by Lomo
By Neil Doocy
30 March 2008
The subtlety of having just three colors on the body of this camera stand out the most. luckily the camera I bought came with a blue stripe. I know that the colors really have no effect on the way that the camera functions, but they seem so important to me. A plastic camera that really doesn't resemble a camera that one might buy for a couple dollars and have thrown away after just one use. This isn't a disposable camera by any means, except that it was likely thrown away because of it's lack of importance in the modern, digital world.
This was my second Lomographic camera, but my first Russian camera. There could be some amazing history behind this camera that I'll likely never know about or it could just be left over from when the manufacturing stopped. I bought this camera, in a package, from lomography.com where there are many cameras that are old, but great for just having fun. I remember getting this camera, it was a new camera to me. It was in it's original box in a red pouch, that just didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the look of the camera. The manual was in Russian, which I do not understand, so I had to look online to find an english version. These cameras take a little getting used to. I rarely look through the viewfinder on this camera. Sometime I forget to pull the red lever over to the right. Hopefully I notice but occasionally I snap a picture and wind the film, ending up with nothing. It is possible to do multiple exposures, which would be really fun if you take the time to plan them out.
There are little symbols to show the different shutter speeds. the aperture is set with the film speed. There is the, always amazingly helpful, bulb setting. The hardest part, for me, is figuring out when the rool is done. It's not like we can expect these cameras to work very well, but they do what needs to be done.
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