sllɐqǝʎǝʎzznɟ

I must admit that I was very excited to test drive the Diana Mini when I received it yesterday. I was curious how it will perform … will ‘she’ produce photos that are close to what its elder sister (the Diana F+) can churn out? Is it just a cute pretty camera? As I was only free (after Fitzand went to bed) around 10pm … I decided to load a roll of expired ISO200 film and (in a state of super tired) fire some test shots around home. Instead of the Diana flash that mounts perfectly on the Mini, I thought I could try using the Lomo Ringflash on it.

Using the adapter for the Fisheye2 on the ringflash, I placed the Mini on the ringflash and it seemed to sit there pretty nicely. To make it ‘stay’ better, a double sided tape or a rubber band is definitely a better way but since this is a test roll … I just held both together with my hands.

Didn’t manage to take too many photos with the ringflash (I need sleep!) and so the rest of this test roll were taken on my way to work this morning. Unfortunately some shots were way underexposed because if my random shooting under low light condition. The rest turned out fine. You can see that I was trying out both the square format as well as the half frame feature. Some ‘pano’ format ones were done by turning the advance dial halfway and firing the next shot. It’s cool how the Mini allows you to take a next shot without requiring you to fully advance the frame. This means you can do some mad, messy and crazy ‘pano’ photos with it.

See the light leak? I ‘added’ it by sliding open the camera back (just a little) for a fraction of a second

Sorry for the pretty random and lousy choice of subjects. I just wanted to give the Mini a test drive and didn’t bother putting any effort … except just clicking away like a madman. 😛

So what do I think of this super cute little Diana Mini? Hmm …

1. Cute and small.

2. The feature to allow switching between the square format & half frame is way cool. No more banging my head on the wall trying to finish 72 frames on a normal half frame camera!

3. Able to trigger the shutter without having to fully advance a frame means it is possible to make crazy pano shots.

4. The shutter release is not as ‘loose’ as the Diana F+ cameras … this means less risk of accidentally firing a shot.

5. You can use a shutter release cable on it without having to buy an adapter (like in the Diana F+).

6. The little film counter behind the camera is a little too small. Hmm. How big can they make it, since the cam is so tiny? Hahaha! Must be my old eyes that’s to blame.

7. Lens cap seems to fall off easily. Be careful with it.

8. Doing multiple exposures is a piece of cake with the Mini. Just like the Diana F+ cameras, you can just press the shutter release as many times as you want without having to use any multi-exposure (MX) buttons/switch.

9. The supplied strap is a little clumsy on the little cam. I removed mine and will find a wrist strap instead.

10. The distance ‘dial’ in front of the lens is a little too small for fat fingers like mine and also the ‘arrow’ that points to the printed distance guide …  is pretty hard to look at because the ‘arrow’ is black and the background of the front (where the 1-2M, 2-4M etc are) is also back. Possibly the problem is due to my lousy fuzzy eyeballs though.

11. Cute and small (did I already mention this?)

In short … I think it’s a really little fun camera. I’m afraid my Golden Half camera might be sleeping for a longer time with the arrival of this Mini. As a matter of fact … Fitzand has been playing with my Golden Half for a while now. Yet to finish the roll of film inside though. I’ll definitely go get it developed when he is done playing with it.

A spin off to the 36 Frames challenge … I’ve received one set of photos last night and looking forward to another two today. Hope the participants can send me their entries soon because I need time to rename and upload them to my gallery. Hahaha. Unfortunately due to space constraints … I’m resizing the submitted images to 400px on the wide side instead of the 600px mentioned in the requirements. Getting more exciting already!