General Photography | Lomo Fisheye 2

It was about three years ago, I don’t remember the exact date, but I do remember it was summer. I had gone up to London to meet up with my friend Heather. It was general day up in central London and at one point we had made out way to the Photographers Gallery. This was when it was still in Great Newport Street. The gallery now resides on Ramillies Street, just of Oxford Street. And I went straight to the shop, as I would usually do, but today was different. Today I actually had money. So I went into and there I saw the camera that I had been drooling over slightly just a few weeks prior. This camera [as you would probably have already guessed from the title of this post] was the Lomo Fisheye2 Camera.

The Lomo Fisheye2 camera is a small 35mm compact camera with a 10mm fixed lens attached to the front of it. This gives you a focal length of 170mm on 35mm film. Some of the main differences between the original Lomo Fisheye camera and the Fisheye2 that I purchased is that the one I purchased has a BULB setting for longer exposures. A hotshoe has been placed at the top of the camera. This is useful so that you can attach an external flash unit to the camera and the ability to make multiple exposures. All of these new features I have used during my time owning this camera.

The majority of the photographs that I have included in this post were taken on colour positive film which was then cross processed. Cross processing is a method of getting strange and unusual colours from your films as the results are generally unpredictable and I like it because it keeps with the Lomo way of thinking. To cross process you need a colour positive film [E-6 Process], expose the film as normal and when you go to get it processed ask for it to be put through a normal colour process [this is called a C-41 Process] and it turns your positive film into a negative film and you get pretty astounding results as times. Not alot of places cross process films these days, so it’s best to ask around beforehand. A good place to try is Snappy Snaps as they are the only ones I know of that are local and still do it.

You can fake cross process results with some presets in Adobe Photoshop. But after seeing the results that this digital processing produces I feel I can say that nothing beats the real thing. One of the good things about cross processing is not knowing how the final print will come out.

One of the shots on this post was featured on the Abduzeedo blog. It was a post entitled 60 Interesting Lomo Fisheye Shots. I actually forgot about this till recently. I have included the link below. Also if you click the word Abduzeedo above it will take you to the main site Abduzeedo website. Do please have a look as it’s a great website and they have plenty of tutorials one there for Photoshop and other image editing websites.

http://abduzeedo.com/60-interesting-lomo-fisheye-shots

In today’s post I have included 13 photographs. All of which were taken with the Lomo Fisheye2 camera in various locations, but mainly in London. They were also all cross processed after exposure except for the black and white photograph which was processed in a standard way. Upon having written this blog I have decided that I am going to be taking my Fisheye 2 out again soon. As it has been sitting atop my printer for some time and I may write a second post with more up to date photographs.

The Photographers Gallery
- http://www.photonet.org.uk/

Abduzeedo
- http://abduzeedo.com/

Fisheye2 Microsite
- http://microsites.lomography.com/fisheye/specifications/