The Family: CATHERINE (Lomography Colorsplash)

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 Introducing: Catherine

hello! i figured, in the interest to getting to know each other, you and i should become better acquainted. to that end, i thought i'd make a series of posts showcasing all of my cameras. yes, i do give all my stuff human names. what's life without whimsy?

a photo of a rounded white camera with a cylindrical flash jutting from the side of it, in a teal green carry case.

ok so back in 2004, the relatively new Urbis museum and gallery in manchester held an exhibition where lomography was front and centre. a friend told me about it and i went. i was into film photography at the time - not for art, more for taking pictures of my pals on nights out. film was basically the only option i had; even if phone cameras had been good at that point, i'd not have been able to afford one. 

but that exhibition changed everything for me. photography was not some stuffy art form for pretentious black and white images of headless bare-chested women titled 'sadness' or some shit. i mean, yeah, there is that too, sure, but this was different. this exhibit was a bunch of mancs using lomography cameras to take pictures of the mundane, and what i saw was beautiful. 

i walked into the gift shop and bought myself a lomography colorsplash.

cut to now: that camera has long been lost in house moves and the like. but 2024!cos is ready to try film photography again, and there's only one thing on my mind: that silly plastic camera.

a shot of three pigeons, one in flight, bathed in red light from the coloured flash.a photo of a building decked in christmas lights. the lights have been dragged to the side, leaving trails.a photo of two shops next to each other on a rainy street. the shutters are down. one shop is "fresh bites." the other is "adult superstore."a photo of a corner of wall, with both sides covered in colourful graffiti.

this camera is wacky, there's no doubt about it. it has two modes: normal and bulb. normal is as you'd expect - you press the shutter, it takes the picture, either with flash or without. bulb mode is different - here, you press the shutter, and hold it down for as long as you like. the camera will expose your shot for as long as you hold down that button. you can use this for weird effects like the photos here - trailing lights, arty blurs, you name it. it's safe to say i've experimented a LOT with that.

not to mention the coloured flashes. see that cylinder jutting out the side of the camera? rotate that and you get a blue flash, or pink, or green, or anything you can imagine. that photo of the pigeons up there was taken with a red flash. it's nothing amazing but it does make a picture more interesting; if you're gonna use flash anyway, why not get weird with it?

a long exposure of a neon light in the shape of a stratocaster guitar. the light is dragged across the frame in a trippy manor.a photo of a weird papier mache statuette in the shape of a woman with no face, with light trails making a square shape.A night shot of a brightly lit petrol station against a black sky. the light streaks out from the source due to the long exposure.a long exposed, purple-lit shot of an underground train station as the train pulls into the station.a photo of a blue-bricked building against a soft orange sky.a light-painted spiral, white in the centre, then yellow, then orange, against a black background.

honestly, i'll never not love this fucking camera. and on top of everything else, it looks out of this world. since 2003, when the camera first released, lomography have made more and more interesting cameras. one of them, the LomoApparat, looks like it's taken everything the colorsplash has and added multiple exposure modes while they're at it. i'll probably be using that from now on, and retiring catherine to my nick nack shelf where i can gaze upon it for eternity.

Pros:

  • creative as heck! bulb mode! coloured flashes!
  • great for experimentation
  • looks like a magical spaceship

Cons:

  • bulb mode's great, but there's no tripod socket
  • the rewind lever is VERY hard to turn, and easily breakable due to the force you have to exert

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