On my first outing with the Lomo LC-A I used one of the expired (c. 2002) Konica VX100 films set at 50ASA. Although I obtained some images, the negatives were very thin, so I thought I would double check with a new and unexpired roll of XP2.
I took a series of images with the Lomo LC-A set on the auto setting and then the same image with the camera on the manual exposure setting. Immediately I could tell that the manual setting was not exposing at 1/60s each time, sometimes the shutter was audibly slower, sometimes it felt right. I finished the roll and sent it off for developing. For the first time I requested that the laboratory just develop the roll of film and not scan the images, as I wanted to see how easy it would be to scan the images with the new Lomography Digitaliza Max.
Although the Digitaliza Max is designed for use with a smartphone, with my particular phone it was always difficult to get a decent focus with the Digitaliza Max, so I treated myself to a cheap Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ9, a 12MP compact camera from 2013. I already have a DMC-TZ8, which I had converted to full spectrum for infrared photography, and it is one of my favourite cameras.
Using the Digitaliza Max is simplicity itself. It can be used with batteries or connected through a USB cable, but I used a powerbank. The 35mm films feed through the device and once I had the Lumix fixed securely to the DigitaLiza stand it was a quick process to scan the film roll. After scanning, the images were uploaded to my smartphone from the cameras SD card with a USB card reader and processed with the phone app, SnapSeed.
From the film roll it was immediately clear that the images taken with the manual setting were incorrectly exposed. Some were underexposed, while others were grossly overexposed. However, all of the images taken with the camera on the auto setting looked fine and well exposed.
The conclusions are that I can really only use the LC-A in auto mode, and for good measure I might stick to using ISO 400 film. The exercise also showed that scanning films with the DigitaLiza Max and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ9 will certainly save me some money in the future.
/ˈsnæp.ʃɒt/ 