My Digital Colorsplash

The Colorsplash camera is a $75 film camera distributed by the Lomographic Society International. It's distinguishing feature is its colored flash. It also has a bulb feature for long exposures. Lomographers use the camera to "shoot from the hip" and produce fun and compelling images.

Check [HERE] to go to the official LSI page. It shows the camera, photo techniques, a galleryof colorsplash photos, as well as an online shop for all your lomo goods. Much as I like the idea of having the actual camera, it has been quite some time since I've used film. I shoot digital nowadays, mostly with a Canon DSLR, and sometimes with a Panasonic point-and-shoot when I don't feel like bringing the DSLR kit.

I have fully embraced the convenience of digital - mostly because the per-shot cost is cheaper, and the instant gratification of seeing the photos after they are taken. I still have an old manual film SLR, a film rangefinder, and a toy camera from Pizza Hut sitting on a shelf. But the colorsplash camera seems a lot of fun, so I thought about making a couple of accessories so that my digital camera can take similar photos.

The first step was getting a lens. Modern SLR lenses are just too sharp. I was lucky and found an old plastic lens that used to be the viewfinder of a non-funtioning video camera.



I used a swiss army knife to carve out a round hole in a body cap, then mounted the lens with epoxy. The outer ring of the lens is solidly fixed to the body cap, but the lens can be focused by turning the inner ring of the lens. Infinity focus is a bit dicey - and image quality is absolutely horrible, The lens is not sharp and the chromatic abberation is out of control. The contrast isn't very good (easily solved in software) and it doesn't focus in one plane. If the center is in focus, the edges are not. But its the imperfections in the lens that gives it character.

The next step was to make a gelled flash. The 350D already has a built in flash, so I just needed something to hold the colored gels. I initially thought of using a transluscent film canister, but I ended up using an empty compactflash container.




I cut up some plastic phone cards into H-shapes to be used a gel holders. The "gels" are really just small bits of colored plastic bags. As far as colors are concerned, I have No Fear red, Wet Market green, Robinsons' orange, SM Supermarket yellow, & SM Department Store blue.

digicolorsplash

Sep 10, 2006 - The link goes to 29 Photos on my Picasa Web Gallery.

With lens and the flash mounted on my camera, it was time to take photos! I'm still experimenting with the digital colorsplash, but I love the results! Here are a couple of photos from this combo: