No, its not spring baseball, its my Oktomat camera. It will not properly advance film. Sometimes I get double exposures or more. But if I shoot multiple frames of the same scene, the result can be interesting. Above is a recent double exposed wall at a fast food restaurant. Below is a grayscale triple of the skylight in the Bradbury Building.

Part of the fun from last Saturday's photo walk was people's reactions to my bright red Oktomat camera. When using the camera, I don't compose the camera very often - I just hold the camera at arm's length and shoot away. During the two second sequence, I may move the camera slightly to change the image from frame to frame. Here are four good examples. Of course a cheap $40 camera with eight plastic lenses will give uneven exposures and color shifts, but hey, that's part of the fun!

Last week I got carried away one evening and exposed two roles of 36 exposure film with Los Angeles City Hall as the subject. With the Oktomat camera's eight images per frame its 8 times 2 times 36 for 576 images of city hall. Anyway I used 20 frames to make this image, A large version is posted here at flickr.

Thank god for a cheap service at labs these days - only cost three bucks per role to get scanned onto cds.

I got a chance to use the Oktomat camera this last week. Here are two photos from the cheap film camera. Above is the Fillmore Train Station. Below is another Los Angeles City Hall pic.

Hey OctuMom, I have the perfect camera for you. Line up all eight kids in two neat rows and with one click you've got an photo of each! The camera is the Lomo Oktomat. Perfect for all those OctuMoms out there - I think there are two. Talk about a nitch market.


The Oktomat UnBoxing!

Since new camera gear looks very unlikely in this deep recession, I went retro. I emptied my piggy bank of $40 in coins and purchased a Oktomat film camera on Amazon. I took pictures of the unboxing and shot a roll of film of my two biggest kids - the dogs. Its been years since I walked into a film lab and requested develop only. The clerk still asked what size prints I wanted. No I don't want prints, I want develop only.

I got develop only.

Funny, I quickly remembered why I love digital. I had to dig around and find an Agfa 8x Lupe. Then examine each 35 mm frame with the loop. Then pick a few frames to scan. Then scan. Then finally get into photoshop. Yea.


The camera has eight small plastic lenses that fire off over a two second span. I used a role of 200 ASA film. Of course there is some differences in exposures by the eight lenses. In this frame I was able to shoot four frames of Woody, top, and four of Sam.

Actually this whole experience was great fun. I am looking forward to using my new red camera, if only I can get it back from my son who is taking a high school photography class.

In the meantime, Bob Lachman, has a gallery of his Oktomat images over at www.photographyandthemac.com. He was the one that put me onto this camera.


Of course, I had to run one frame through Topaz Simplify.