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A toy camera is a simple, inexpensive
Lomography and the 'Analogue Future'
Time, 2012 {{Photography-stub Cameras by type
A toy camera is a simple, inexpensive film
A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...
camera. Despite the name, toy cameras are fully functional and capable of taking photographs, though with optical aberration
In optics, aberration is a property of optical systems, such as Lens (optics), lenses and mirrors, that causes the ''image'' created by the optical system to not be a faithful reproduction of the ''object'' being observed. Aberrations cause the i ...
s due to the limitations of their simple lens
A lens is a transmissive optical device that focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements'') ...
es. From the 1960s onward, there has been interest in the artistic use of such cameras or recreation of this style, both with cameras originally designed for children, and others originally intended as mass-market consumer cameras.
Many professional photographers have used toy cameras and exploited the vignetting
In photography and optics, vignetting ( ) is a reduction of an image's brightness or saturation toward the periphery compared to the image center. The word '' vignette'', from the same root as ''vine'', originally referred to a decorative b ...
, blur, light leaks, and other distortions
of their inexpensive lenses for artistic effect to take award-winning pictures.
Toy camera photography has been widely exhibited at many popular art shows, such as the annual "Krappy Kamera" show at the Soho Photo Gallery in the Tribeca
Tribeca ( ), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Str ...
neighborhood of New York City. Various publications such as ''Popular Photography'' magazine have extolled the virtues of the Diana camera in its own right as an "art" producing image maker. Several books have also featured the work of toy cameras such as The Friends of Photography's ''The Diana Show,'' ''Iowa'' by Nancy Rexroth, and ''Angels at the Arno'' by Eric Lindbloom.
See also
*Lomography
Lomography, or simply lomo, is a photographic style which involves taking spontaneous photographs with minimal attention to technical details. Lomographic images often exploit the unpredictable, non-standard optical traits of toy cameras (such as ...
, an experimental genre of photography often employing toy cameras
* Pinhole camera
A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens but with a tiny aperture (the so-called ''Pinhole (optics), pinhole'')—effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through the aperture and projects a ...
* Holga, Chinese mass-market 120 film camera
* Lubitel, mass-market Russian, 120 film, twin-lens reflex camera
A twin-lens reflex camera (TLR) is a type of camera with two objective Photographic lens, lenses of the same focal length. One of the lenses is the photographic objective or "taking lens" (the lens that takes the picture), while the other is use ...
s
* Lensbaby
* PXL2000, a toy video camera that has been rediscovered by filmmakers
References
External links
Lomography and the 'Analogue Future'
Time, 2012 {{Photography-stub Cameras by type