April 13, 2018

Splitzed and hacked and filtered…

And so, back again to the dreaded Lomography. It is funny how it always ends up there. One thing I will say is that the Lomography crowd have an almost insatiable desire for hacking things, making cameras do weird and wonderful effects and sometimes I get that bug too. Please don’t tell anyone.

A camera which is very dear to my heart is my Diana F+. I first read about this in a magazine, just as I was starting to develop an interest in film photography, and made a trip down to Soho to find one. Of course on of the features of the Diana is that you can take multiple exposures on one frame. This is a fun thing…

You may be aware of the Diana Splitzer. This is a little device that fits over the barrel of your Diana F+ and contains a set of rotating shutters. You can therefore mask off part of the frame, and as there is not double exposure prevention on the Diana, you can then shoot two related, or entirely different subjects on two halves of the frame.

I’ve quite enjoyed this, and got some daft images from it. This got me thinking: All this is is a little tube on the end of the frame. There is some hacking to be done here.

One thing that the Diana lacks is the ability to attach filters, and filters are great for doing crazy stuff. I happened upon one of those wierd multi image filters, which pop up in the lowest of low budget sci-fi films – like a Kaleidoscope basically – with a 49mm filter thread. I have quite a few 49mm filters as a good number of my M42 lenses have a 49mm thread. The Diana lens barrel is 50mm in outside diameter. This is becoming too good to be true.

The Diana filter Holder

You will need:

A short length of 50mm internal diameter plastic plumbing pipe. When i say short, you need about 30-40mm length. You can probably scrounge this, or I have found small lengths on Ebay.
A 50-49mm step down ring. Again, Ebay is your friend. Stepping rings are not expensive, but this is a slightly odd one and may be harder to find. Shouldn’t be more than a fiver absolute tops. You can of course use any stepping ring so long as the first thread is 50mm. 50-52mm may be a good bet. I would be reticent to go much larger, as it is held in to the pipe by self-tapping a thread and anything that extends out may come out more often if it is knocked.
A junior hacksaw.
Emery Cloth (or sandpaper if that’s all you have).

It’s so simple, it’s insane.

Cut a small length of pipe. This needs to be short enough so as to not hit the shutter release, and not to cause too much vignetting. Sand down the rough edges. Screw the stepping ring into the end. If you like add a (very) small blob of epoxy to the end of the pipe to hold it in.