James Butler Reviews the Konstruktor!

James Butler, a London Soho store regular, was handed a Konstruktor to test drive. In short: a former skeptic and now a convert! Read on to find out what he said about the Konstruktor…

Lomography kindly lent me a Konstruktor camera to play with for a couple of days, to review (it came ready-built so I’m reviewing it as a finished camera, ignoring for now the DIY part, although I’m looking forward to building my own soon!)

First impressions were really good – it’s much more sturdy than you might think, the plastic is nice and chunky. Really easy to load and the viewfinder works great – was really happy with the focus on all my shots, and it’s nice to be able to play with focus on a cheap toy camera – normally they have fixed focus.

The top-down viewfinder is well suited to portraits – although it doesn’t give you a very shallow depth of field (being f/10) if your background is distant and your subject close you do get some nice separation. Street shooting is a little trickier as the viewfinder is flipped left-to-right, but you can always shoot blind without the viewfinder (maybe Lomography will bring out accessories – like a little clip-on viewfinder for when you don’t need to look through the lens).

As a big multiple exposure fan I shot a few doubles and triples – really easy to do as you just re-set the shutter and shoot again as many times as you like. I’ve seen some people make some DIY splitzers, again it might be nice if Lomography brought out one you could buy. As usual my multiple exposures were pretty hit and miss, but happy with a few.

Overall I was really impressed with the Konstruktor, based solely on it’s usability as a plastic camera, ignoring the build-it-yourself aspect. As a toy camera I think it’s pretty neat and I look forward to building my own soon. And hoping some more lenses / accessories are in the pipeline!

written by golfpunkgirl on 2013-08-05 #gear #review #analogue-photography #photographer #photowalk #uk #lomography #analogue-cameras #user-review #35mm-films #sohostore #londonsoho #londoneast #konstruktor #lomouk