I’m noticing an increasing and disturbing trend for people to use the word “Lomo” to describe any playful, plasticky, lo-fi camera. I realize that “Lomo” is a cute word, which is fun to say—but I have to make a (probably futile) stand for accuracy here.
Lomo is a Russian manufacturer of optics and related products. They’ve used the LOMO name (which in Cyrillic can look like “nomo”) since 1965; they existed under the name GOMZ before that. The “L” originally stood for Leningrad—though the city itself has now restored its older name of St. Petersburg.
Lomo is a sophisticated and diversified maker of optics, particularly for the Russian military (check out the night vision goggles on their website). Actually in the GOMZ era, they created one of the very first 35mm SLRs, the 1936 “Sport.” They also made the inexpensive Lubitel and Smena cameras.
The “Lomo Compact” or LC-A camera was their 1980s low-budget knock-off of the Cosina CX-2. The front panel of Cosina’s camera rotated to cover the lens and viewfinder; Lomo dropped that feature, but amusingly, kept the round-topped Cosina body shape. The CX-2 had a 5-element lens; the LC-A substituted a cheaper three-element lens—with the side effect of very noticeable vignetting at the corners of the frame.
Eventually, a couple of Austrian students fell in love with the quirky LC-A, and founded the now-infamous Lomographic Society. This is not a club, but a business who obtained exclusive rights to sell the LC-A in countries outside Russia.
Their “hip, edgy” marketing annoyed many people—because the LC-A was never all that different from many other cheap autoexposure cameras. However the business has been very successful, and now they use the “Lomography” branding on a bunch of different plasticky cameras–mostly made in China and having nothing at all to do with the Russian Lomo company. Today, even the original LC-A has ceased production; the Lomographic Society has commissioned a Chinese re-creation, the LC-A+.
Thus, it’s incorrect to dub all cheap and zany plastic cameras “Lomo.” It might be accurate to call the cameras marketed by the Society “Lomography” cameras—as long as one remembers that they have no camera manufacturing facilities of their own.
The Lomography Society is one of the major sellers of Holga cameras; but they did not invent the Holga (which originated in Hong Kong), and it is not in any sense a “Lomo.” The Lomography Society simply resells Holgas, in pre-packaged bundles with higher prices.
If the fashion-victim aspect of the Lomography Society turns you off, keep in mind that a plain vanilla Holga is widely available at ~$25 USD. If you’re feeling adventurous, there are many other inexpensive, DIY plastic-camera options like flipping the lens on a Brownie Hawkeye. If you you’d like a more LC-A flavored camera with a decent lens, a good choice might be a used Olympus XA2, which often sell on eBay for under $30 with shipping.
[Originally posted in slightly different form on Flickr’s ‘I Shoot Film’ forum. ]
Postscript
Since first writing this, I’ve mellowed my opinion about the Lomography Society somewhat. They certainly have done more than anyone else to bring new people into film photography; converts who presumably will outgrow LSI’s gimmicky limitations and move on, wiser and somewhat poorer.
The Lomography story is the story of modern commerce, textbook “brand marketing”: Attach an aura of coolness to a particular name, then reap the rewards in recognition, sales, and profits. It’s hardly any different from Nike, Apple, or countless others.
But I still chafe at them hijacking the name Lomo.
September 22nd, 2012 at 11:28 am
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