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Do Any Of You Use The 35mm Lomokino Movie Camera?

Gentlemen, have any of you had any experience with the Lomokino movie camera? I saw this devise a couple of years ago and became a bit fascinated with it. It is about as low tech and analogue as you can get. It uses standard 35mm film rolls mounted horizontally and makes four nominally 8.5mm film frames per 35mm frame length space. So 144 frames per 36 exposure roll. You hand crank the film advance at a speed of around 3-5 frames second. At say four frames per second you will net a 35 second or so film. Sometimes less depending upon length of roll.

You have the film developed or do it at home and there you go. A short silent film. If having a lab do the development you need to tell them not to cut the roll into strips. This way you can view it through the Lomokino Viewer or scan through their smartphone scanner attachment.

I've seen a number of the films on YouTube and they are a hoot. I would think you would want to shoot mostly black and white so you could develop at home for a reasonable cost. I haven't had a roll of film developed at a store lab in years so I have no idea what it costs these days. The only roll film I see at the discount stores is Fuji and a four pack is about $12. So you could fiddle with this rather inexpensively as long as you don't go completely crazy filming stuff like the vacuum cleaner. These have been on sale with the viewer for around 60 dollars lately and I thought it may make fun to use item during the holiday seasons upcoming. What say you?

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No experience at all, but it certainly looks like it would be fun. The only downside that I can see is that there is no "instant gratification" involved which can be difficult to explain to children these days...

Feel free to drop me a note if you need some pointers on developing b/w film.
 
I have one and the smartphone scanner too. To be honest, the results are somewhat underwhelming in person and the novelty wore out quickly for me. However, if you have 60+ bucks (and film) to spare with time to kill, it's a good toy to have fun with every now and then.
 
energyloop, I can appreciate that. Indeed, a novelty item is exactly how I look at this product. I know it is all the rage these days with lomography and retro video apps like Vintage Camera and Vintage 8mm Video Camera. I actually like that Lomo look of the apps and old film. Yeah, it is pure nostalgia and I get that too.

The attraction of the Lomokino for me is the ability to show my teenage daughter what it was like to shoot 'video' when I was a lad. Super8 was kind of cool in its own way. The films were silent(there were sound models but they were off the scale price wise) and ran about 2-1/2 minutes per roll. My dad had a number of films made of us when we were little(mid to late 1960s) that were lost to fire. So I cannot show her what it was like. The Lomo will let me do that for a very reasonable cost. Right now they are on sale for $49.99 with the Lomo Cinescope. A bit of generous help on this forum helped me decide to develop the film at home so I can learn that process as well. A few rolls of film and I can get to it for under $200. So for us, this would be a pre Christmas toy to muck around with. Film our dog and cat and one of their daily All Star Wresting matches, the grandson, and maybe a tine bit of costume and script work. If the new wears off too quickly then off it goes to the BST and no harm done.

My original plan was to buy an old Standard 8mm wind up camera and source some film and make a few movies with her. Folly. 8mm film is priced by the foot(typically .80 per foot/do the math for 200 ft.) processing is a send away thing to a place like Dwayne's and it is pricey as well. Then you need to source a functioning projector. Fingers crossed it doesn't burn or crease your film. If all that works you have now spent 600-800 dollars on five minutes of film. You may pull it off cheaper than that but I doubt it. We'll see. I am talking with my wife about it this weekend.
 
David, thank you for that bit of information. Black & White film is precisely where I want to begin.

I wish there was a way to do something like the Lomokino with a split frame like the old standard 8. It was really 16mm wide and you ran it through the movie camera one way which exposed one half side of the film. Then you ran the film a second time to expose the other side. The developer then split the film lengthwise and spliced them together.

With the 36mm width of standard roll film you could get 288 frames instead of 144 by doing something similar. At least I guess it could be done but I don't know how complicated the camera would have to be. I suppose you could wind the film back into the roll, pull out the leader and run it from the other direction but who knows? Just daydreaming really. Thanks again.
 
It's a excellent tool to teach the older method of film making, and it can be fun for the family. I recommend it if that's your goal.

As for the split framing, it isn't too complicated to do something similar. You just need to mask slightly over half of the area behind the lens part of the Lomokino. I personally wouldn't do it due to the already poor optics on the lens, but if you can look past that, go for it.
 
energyloop,I am not that brave! And as you note, the lens is already rudimentary as is. This could be a fun thing to fiddle with for a while. Thank you for the replies.
 
You know what gents? In my enthusiasm for daydreaming about film rates and such, it dawned on me what I suggested is probably not feasible. When you run 35mm film in a video camera it is run up and down, or vertically. Whereas it is run horizontally in a still camera. Same exact 36x24mm frame but it is up and down for moving pictures. So the width would be 12mm at best for each frame if you split it like the old 8mm was. Likely less allowing for shutter mechanisms and such. I saw a reference somewhere that the Lomokino's aspect ratio is 1.85:1 and is the same as something called Ultrapan8. Each frame is something like 14 wide and 8.5 mm tall. So this would likely not be as easy as I thought. Just some more trivia.
 
35mm cine cameras use a frame size half that of 35mm still film. The frame is still horizontal when run vertically. That 18x24 mm frame is the old 4:3 aspect ratio silent film. IIRC the Lomokino uses a frame that is half that height to achieve the wide aspect ratio, so you get 4 frames per still frame.

Back in the 20s Bell and Howell made or contemplated 17.5mm film for their cameras using split 35mm film. They settled on 16mm as an alternative because 35mm stock of that time period was made on flammable nitrate film stock which was too dangerous for home use.

Mike
 
Mike, interesting about the split 35mm idea. I once had an old 16mm Kodak Cine-something or other film camera. It took a cassette/magazine of some sort to keep the film safe. Of course finding anyone to actually load the magazine with film was impossible even if it would have come with the old camera. I now wish I would have kept it since the lens was removable and you can buy adapters for almost any digital ILC these days. It would have been neat to see what the images and videos would have looked like.

I do wonder if the Lomo folks will come up with a camera that does the same thing with 35mm film cartridges. Load the whole thing in a magazine, run it one way using half side of the film with an offset shutter like the old standard 8s. Turn the magazine around run the film the other way which would take the film back up into the cartridge. Develop it, split it, and now you have double the length of film. From cheap 35mm off the shelf cartridges. Just daydreaming I guess.
 
Todd, That could work. Lomo is the kind of outfit that could produce such a thing. Making a splitter wouldn't be that complicated. Heck, you could scan the unsplit film and stitch it together with software if you like.

Mike
 
Todd, That could work. Lomo is the kind of outfit that could produce such a thing. Making a splitter wouldn't be that complicated. Heck, you could scan the unsplit film and stitch it together with software if you like.

Mike

Mike, I hadn't thought of splitting them with software but it makes sense. No special cutter, no special scanning mask, no special film holders. And you could still split it, splice it together and run it through a Lomokinoscope if you wanted to. Now they have me thinking.
 
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