Lo-Fi Photography: turn your DSLR into a toy camera

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Lo-Fi photography is enjoying a huge revival at the moment. Using old cameras has become seriously trendy, and there’s now an easy way to get vintage-looking snaps with a modern digital camera.

Cult camera brand Lomography has created a set of plastic lenses for digital cameras so that DSLR users can participate in the lo-fi photography revival.

The Diana+ lenses cost around £30 each and fit onto all DSLRs with a simple plastic adapter (which costs around £15). The collection includes a fisheye and a telephoto as well as the 33mm superwide lens that we tried out.

The lenses are pretty low tech, but that’s part of the fun of lo-fi photography. The unpredictable variations and soft, slightly surreal focus that they produce allow you to create retro snaps without the fuss of film.

Lo Fi Photography step by step: how to turn your DSLR into a toy camera

01 Attaching a Diana lens
Fit the adapter onto the back of the Diana lens and twist clockwise until it clicks into place. Now, mount the Diana lens onto your camera body by aligning the lens with your camera and rotating anticlockwise until the lens locks on and you hear another click.

02 Switch to manual
Switch to Manual mode – your camera won’t recognize the lens otherwise. The aperture is fixed; to adjust the exposure change the ISO and shutter speed. The lens is marked with three distances, so you can estimate how far away your subject is and pick a focal distance to use.

03 Get experimenting
Diana lenses are great for taking portraits and for capturing anything in the middle ground. Try shooting interiors, cityscapes, architecture or garden scenes. The secret is to experiment; the idea is to create unpredictable and surreal takes on everyday scenes.

Posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 at 11:30 am under Photography Tutorials, Tutorials.