Toy Camera and Unpredictable Polaroid Vintage Effects

15 min read
Graphics, Photography, Tutorials, Photoshop, Vintage
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Jessica Bordeau is a soon-graduated student whose primary interests are Photography and Media. More about Jessica ↬

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Since its emergence, the digital photography market has gradually supplanted the traditional one. APN and digital SLR cameras entered our lives, and some people announced the death of silver-based images. This is not all lie, and yet old-fashioned images have been particularly popular in the past few years.

Since its emergence, the digital photography market has gradually supplanted the traditional one. Digital compact and SLR cameras entered our lives, and some people announced the death of silver-based images. This is not all lie, and yet old-fashioned images have been particularly popular in the past few years. [Updated June/14/2017]

All we do seem to do now is try to recreate the atmosphere of those bygone times anyway. Blurry, distorted and over-saturated images are not just a fad anymore. People have became familiar with the style and even consider it a full-fledged photographic genre.

Famous Toy Cameras

Toy cameras are cheap, low quality and yet functional. As such, the deformations in the photos they produce are pronounced, and not all images are guaranteed to be perfectly exposed. Still, there are just so many of them these days that picking a few is hard. The ones presented here have paved the way for the success of the others. You may know them but not the stories behind them?

Diana

Let’s start where it all began. Picture yourself in Hong Kong in the early ’60s, when a factory starts producing the Diana. This inexpensive plastic-body camera was at the time usually given away as a novelty gift. Occasionally, it would be used by actual photographers who took advantage of the various effects it produced. And many effects there were. Because of the poor quality of materials used, the Diana camera was disposed to light leaks, leading to film damage, an effect typically fixed by sealing the seams with light-proof tape. Handy, huh?

But the plastic body wasn’t the most interesting part: it was the lens, also made out of plastic. Not only did it enhance the already low contrast created by the light infiltration, but it also made for odd color rendering, chromatic aberration and blurry images. As if this weren’t enough, the image circle only marginally covered the diagonal of the film frame, which is why Diana images have heaving vignetting.

Photo credit: elZekah

As photographers started to deliberately exploit these characteristics, production grew through the ’70s and opened the way for other toy camera manufacturers.

Photo credit: chomdee

Lomo LC-A

This is where things get a bit tricky, so pay attention. It’s now the beginning of the ’90s, and for a few years the Russian factory Lomo PLC has been producing the Lomo LC-A camera, which basically has all of the characteristics of a toy camera (vignetting in particular). But production was stopped, and the camera was all but forgotten until two Austrian students found one at a flea market in 1991 and decided to exploit its marketing potential. They convinced the director of the Lomo PLC factory to relaunch production and negotiated an exclusive contract for distribution with their brand-new company: Lomography AG.

Photo credit: maaku

And here begins the Lomography movement. If the term is familiar to you, you probably know at least two things about it. First, it promotes casual snapshot photography. Second, it is associated with over-saturated and high-contrast images. To confuse things, this second characteristic has nothing to do with the LC-A camera itself or with any other cameras for that matter. It is actually the result of the way the film is processed, which would usually be cross-processing. But Lomography is a movement, not a technique, and it was certainly the first to promote camera imperfections as an aesthetic. The success of the LC-A camera helped spread this aesthetic.

Photo credit: citronnade

Holga

With the success of this movement, Lomography AG became interested in other low-cost cameras, such as the Holga, which had been produced in China for a decade. Even though it was made by a different manufacturer, the Holga was considered the successor of the Diana. Inspired by its predecessor, the Holga was designed as an inexpensive mass-market camera. And like the Diana, it is not of the best quality and has the same flaws.

Photo credit: babyabby10

But the Holga became popular and was even exported to the West over time, mostly for photo-reporting, for which its low profile was appreciated. Its problems were no longer problems, and now it is not surprising to hear of Holga photos winning awards. Because it is entirely manual, one can create effects, such as double exposure and panoramas, by not winding the film.

Photo credit: Bill Hansen (website)

ActionSampler, SuperSampler, Oktomat

These three cameras don’t have many differences. They all take multiple shots in a set period of time, thus creating micro-images that look like short animated movies. The Actionsampler and Supersampler have four lenses each, while the Oktomat has eight, fitting eight frames into the standard 35mm.

Photo credit: amylynnthompson

To make them a bit more fun, what you see through the viewfinder is not exactly what you get.

Photo credit: golfpunkgirl

Lomo Fisheye 2

As the name suggests, the Lomo Fisheye camera has a fish-eye lens. It was the first 35mm compact camera to offer such a wide angle (170°), and unlike the other toy cameras covered here, it gave surprisingly good results for the price. The second edition came with several enhancements, such a viewfinder that covered the same angle as the lens (it was blocked off before).

fisheye
Photo credit: aapnootmies

The effect created, often seen in sport images, can serve many other purposes. But the user should be aware of two major characteristics: strong deformation and light leaks.

Photo credit: faha

Photoshop Tutorials And Resources

Now, let’s put all this into practice. Even if you are familiar with these effects, have ever actually tried to replicate them? There are a lot of different effects, and you can combine them to create unique images.

How To Give Your Photos a Dark Processed Lomo Effect Follow this step by step post processing guide to give your photos a dark lomo style effect with high contrast, blue tones and vignette burns.

The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Lomography This tutorial will guide you through the complexities of becoming a Lomographer using their ten rules as a guide.

Fish-eye effect This shows you how to create a fish-eye effect for a picture taken with a regular lens. This one is a video and it addresses two important points: the lens circle border is not supposed to be so sharp when taking a fish-eye photograph, and one often deals with light infiltration.

Polaroid Montage Learn how to create a Polaroid montage effect in Photoshop.

Recreating Low-Quality Camera Flaws

Vignetting A very simple tutorial on recreating the vignetting effect.

Create a vintage polaroid look in Photoshop Learn how to create different types of vintage looks in Photoshop.

Faking Barrel Distortion and Chromatic Aberrations Here is a nice Photoshop plug-in to fake barrel distortion and chromatic aberrations. Adding these effects to your pictures will make them look even more authentic.

tutorial: polaroid effects Learn how to create a vinatge polaroid effect.

Working on Colors and Light Exposure

LOMO PHOTOGRAPHY EFFECT Aside from the Lo-Fi look of the Lomo, the other main feature of Lomography is the cross processing of the Color Slide Film.

Cross-Processing Tutorial With so many possible permutations of film stock and processing techniques, there is no single, identifiable look to cross-processed images. The most common combination is C-41 as E-6, in which slide chemistry is used to process color negative film; and mimicking it in Photoshop is a quick job. Image contrast is usually high, with blown-out highlights, while shadows tend towards dense shades of blue. Reds tend to be magenta, lips almost purple and highlights normally have a yellow-green tinge.

Cross-Processing Another cros-processing tutorial.

Vintage Effect Age your images a give them a vintage effect.

Using Textures and Double Exposure

Through the Viewfinder Did you know that Flickr has a Through the Viewfinder group? The idea is that you shoot through the viewfinder of an old camera using your modern digital or film camera and create an interesting framing effect. Here is a tutorial on how to create this effect.

Resources of Speckle Pattern Yes, there is also a Flickr group called “Noise and Dust Through the Viewfinder.”

DIY: How to Fake Polaroids Here is a quick and easy tutorial for those who want to learn the art of taking a photo and turning it into an old-fashioned vintage picture.

Create the Polaroid effect for images The quickest and easiest way to transform an image to make it look like it was taken using the Polaroid film.

Filmstrip Effect Download a filmstrip template and use it to create negatives of your pictures.

Double Exposure When you take a double-exposed photograph, the results are usually a bit unpredictable. With Photoshop you have much more control over the result.

Another Way to Create Double Exposure While the most common way to create a double exposure is by using a different blending mode on the top layer and adjusting its opacity, this method accurately simulates how a camera takes a double exposure.

Other Ideas

No tutorials are needed to create these effects. They are included here merely to give you more ideas. You’ll still need to work on your pictures to get that vintage look. Then, just put them together and enjoy.

Shoot Series Like the Oktomat and the Actionsampler Draw inspiration from the Oktomat and Actionsampler cameras. You’ll get either four or eight images in the same frame, each of them having been shot after an interval of only a few seconds.

Photo credit: Look!, by Moyö

Shoot Series like the Supersampler The Supersampler effect is quite similar to the Actionsampler: four images in the same frame, but spaced differently. And remember that you can arrange layers both horizontally and vertically.

Photo credit: moving clocks run slow, by aleinsomniac

Panorama 2 Another inspiring panorama.

Photo credit: bruceberrien

Panorama 3 The panorama view can be combined with a filmstrip effect. It simulates a double-exposure panorama taken on a manual camera.

Photo credit: mikrofoniusz

Want More?

Polaroid

If cheapness is a defining characteristic of toy cameras, it surely isn’t for Polaroids. The Polaroid camera itself is not expensive, but because Fuji is now the only company that produces the film for it, getting affordable ones has become difficult. But this may change in the next few months thanks to the Impossible Project.

Going back a bit, the world’s first commercial instant camera was the “Land” camera, unveiled in 1947. Since then, Polaroid has become synonymous with instant photography, because most of the cameras have been created by the Polaroid Corporation. Nowadays, the cameras are used by photographers mainly to preview their work before actually shooting. But as toy cameras, they are fun to play with and can make for nice effects.

Photo credit: paine666

Polaroid and Transfer Effect

Retro Polaroid Coloring on Your Photos This is a simple tutorial on how to get that retro Polaroid coloring in your photos.

Polaroid Transfer Effect This Photoshop tutorial shows you how to create a cool old photo transfer edge effect using a piece of stock photography, an alpha channel and the burn and dodge tools.

Showcase of Beautiful Pictures

Considering that Flickr has a group for almost every subject, it is no surprise that there is one for toy cameras. Here is a showcase of the most beautiful images from it.

showcase
Photo credit: have I told you lately, by cHr1st1an S

doubleexposure
Photo credit: ubu84

Photo credit: 000038, by qwj

Photo credit: 54330027, by etara

Photo credit: Ipanema Beach - Brazil, by marcelo_maia

Photo credit: Hélicoïdal, by Cathy Lehnebach

Photo credit: Purgatoire, by stiveune

Photo credit: untitled, by Greg Zauswoz

DIY: How to Fake Polaroids Here is a quick and easy tutorial for those who want to learn the art of taking a photo and turning it into an old-fashioned vintage picture.

Create the Polaroid effect for images The quickest and easiest way to transform an image to make it look like it was taken using the Polaroid film.

Filmstrip Effect Download a filmstrip template and use it to create negatives of your pictures.

Double Exposure When you take a double-exposed photograph, the results are usually a bit unpredictable. With Photoshop you have much more control over the result.