Sunday, 24 August 2008
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Epic Edit’s $50 Camera Photo Project :
Vivitar Ultra Slim and Wide – Wannabe or the Real Deal?
I got this all plastic Vivitar Wide and Slim off Ebay for USD9.99 (excluding shipping.) Internet resources list its unique feature as “unusually wide angled lens for its class”. However, it was the description that it was sometimes referred to as a “poor man’s lomo” that caught my attention.
I’ve had my LC-A for almost 10 years now, and I was curious to see how other cameras compare. Considering how the LC-A is now going for an average of USD150 on Ebay these days, 9.99 doesn’t break the bank. However, the price for this item online has certainly shot up thanks to its rising popularity.
Receiving the flat little package that held my Vivitar in the mail, and tearing open the wrapping to get to the camera offered a huge revelation. “Look and Feel” wise, the Vivitar is nothing like the LC-A. Where the LC-A is compact but has a weightiness to it, the Vivitar is slim and flat, like a digital cam wannabe. Its slimness, smallness and plasticky-ness also meant that it felt flimsy. And my first thought was actually, @$%!....I paid $9.99 for this?”
Can a camera as anorexic as this be comparable to the LC-A? With its fixed aperture and shutter speed, it boils down to that fact that everything is based on the users own sense of estimation, experience and skills. Or a large dash of luck, as the lomography mantra goes, “don’t think just shoot”.
Luck must have certainly been on my side as my roll of Fuji Superia 400 stayed intact throughout the trial shoot. For starters, it was quite a delicate operation loading the film as I didn’t want to break anything and frustratingly, the film couldn’t seem to stay firmly in the sprocket. I struggled for a good 20 minutes loading and re-loading the film several times. Finally, it seemed to have latched on and I was able to advance it. (I lost the first exposures of my 36-exposure roll in the process)
However, as I worked through the film, I felt the tension getting tighter and tighter and each time I advanced the film. I held my breath wondering if the next click will be the last, if the next advance is when the film snaps. But to its little credit, the Vivitar kept my roll of film alive and it made its way through a 3-hour outing to the Singapore Flyer.
Like I said, one needs a dash of luck and lighting wise, luck wasn’t on my side most of that day. There was not as much intense natural light as I would have liked as it had been raining intermittently that day.
While I can’t say the results shot on the roll took my breath away, I will admit that I had perhaps been unduly prejudiced against the Vivitar because it was compared against the LC-A.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that despite the lack of clear skies that day, the Vivitar produced some fairly vivid shots. In fact, the detail in a few of the pictures were quite evident despite the fact that I had been “pointing & shooting” at a distance. For example, in photos 10 & 11 , the trellis from the hanging plant shows quite clearly even though I have no recollection that I saw it when taking the picture.
Undoubtedly, this is a small $9.99 wonder. Dare I say it, but it seems to capture images as competently, if not better than some lower-end digital cameras I’ve used. Of course, a large part of this could also be due to the quality of the film.
As for that “lomo” effect, it’s not too apparent from this roll. There’s the vignette effect that probably created its fame as the poor man’s lomo, but the lack of different intensities of light on the day of the shoot meant that I can’t see what this super tiny camera might truly be capable of in terms of “interpreting light”. I’ll probably have to wait for a better day, when the light, the film and my instincts are in sync.
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Photos from the roll are here:
http://photo.xanga.com/toycamper/albums/f202a757233c3d
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