To be honest when I say “Toy” camera in the title that is a little misleading really as the Diana F+ may be a piece of plastic but after shooting my 1st roll with it yesterday I am blown away with what it produces.
Unlike my Holga there are a few more options that sort of give you a little bit of control over the image you want to make.
You have 2 shutter speeds B and N which equates to approx 1/60th along with 4 aperture settings that have the symbols cloud, cloud/sun, sun and Pinhole.
The focusing is zone based with 3 settings.I have had very hit or miss results with my Holga (mainly miss to be honest) and after seeing the results of the Diana on the web I thought I would get one and give it a go.
It was great fun to shoot and I did not alter the settings much from the cloud/sun setting as I was using HP5 and it was pretty overcast.
The overall exposure of all the frames was very good with the only exceptions being the few frames I shot in Pinhole mode which 2 were over exposed an the other very under exposed.The main problem with the Pinhole setting is that even though you can put the camera on a tripod you still have to activate the shutter by hand as it does not have a cable release setting so the frames were quite blurred.
Next time I will try Pinhole by using the lens cap as a shutter rather that just holding then releasing the shutter button (tip I read on the net).Anyway needless to say I absolutely love the camera and the images it makes, the centre of the frame is lovely and sharp with nice blurry edges and variable vignetting.
I will say that I scanned and then processed these in Lightroom and apart from spotting out the dust/hairs I tweaked the Highlight/Shadows a bit (not to much) and a bit of clarity.
I am looking forward to shooting some colour film next and will post the results.
I am not sure if my Holga will be getting as much use as this little beauty and if anyone fancies trying out a “Toy” camera I recommend this highly.
Thanks for looking…..
You can find more of my stuff at
https://usingfilm.wordpress.com/ and https://timdobbsphotography.wordpress.com/
and on Twitter as @timdobbsphoto
Never tried a Diana, but people do love them…..
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Lovely results, a little bit dreamy.
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Lovely dreamy results! This post made me wanna buy a Diana, perhaps a Diana Mini, let’s see 😀
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Very good!… back in the seventies, my father had a Diana, but was not using it too much because 120 rolls were expensive those days, so he said… must look if it is still stack up someplace!
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The Diana F+ is what got me back into film photography a few years ago! What a lovely piece of crap. 😉 Nowadays I use two Vivitar UWSs and a Coronet Commander for my toy camera needs.
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Pingback: Week 28 – Having fun with my new “Toy” camera …… | tim dobbs photography
These are lovely. Very moody.
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Not sure they’re moody, it’s just the weather in the UK!
Good stuff Tim.
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All that gloom looks moody to me in the land of perpetual sunshine 😉
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