Every photographer should have a toy camera. The combination of a low fi plastic lens, minimal controls, and no way to review the images on the spot means there’s nothing much to do except see potential photographs in the scenes around you and try to frame them. The important stuff, in other words.
My latest toy camera is this bright pink Holga digital. It offers three options to the photographer, only one of which is an actual control: color/black and white, 3:2/square, and sun or clouds. You can see in the notes above what that means: “clouds” is a normal exposure (according to the camera’s rudimentary light meter), while “sun” is one stop underexposed. The camera also has a very basic peephole viewfinder that shows you a square. It’s a square image dreamboat, really, and I am shooting only squares on it. Here are a few samples They are all straight out of camera.
(You can see more on my Instagram @kekiongacomics.)
Shooting with a camera like this is as close as you can get to pure photography. Anybody else out there have a toy camera?
