Is This the World's Cutest Camera?

For a while now, I've been curious about 110 film and cameras. It seems like very much a niche format, with it's tiny negatives and tiny spy size cameras, still my curiosity was piqued. When I first saw a Pentax Auto 110, I thought I had to have one, but then reconsidered. I thought it might be better to try a lower end forray into the format, to see if I really liked it at all.

A while back I noticed that Lomography was producing some interesting varieties of 110 film, and just recently I stumbled upon the Diana Baby 110 on their site. I've owned a Diana 35mm before, and while I quite enjoyed the camera, every time I used it I felt like I was breaking it.

This little Diana feels quite a bit sturdier than my previous Diana. As I understand it, a "normal" lens for 110 format is 24mm. The Diana comes with both a 24mm and a 12mm lens.

Lo-fi plastic lens, wide angle, tiny and inexpensive, what more could I want? I paid the princely sum of $35.00 for mine, although the real cost of 110 film is in the developing. My thought is that if I wind up really liking this format, I'll cut down a developing reel to fit 110 film and develop it myself.

In use the camera is super simple. It features fixed focus, fixed shutter speed (unless you switch to bulb) and fixed aperture. Not a lot of choices.

I'd read that the viewfinder was tiny and difficult to frame through. While it is tiny, I found it bright and clear and very easy to use, this something I rarely say, as being a glasses wearer, most viewfinders present difficulties for me.

The camera was incredibly easy to assemble and the film was almost too easy to load. My only complaints are that the shutter action is so stiff that triggering the shutter causes the camera to jerk violently. I was sure that all my shots would be extremely blurry as a result of that, but I guess the 1/100th shutter speed helped with that.

The only other issue I had was with the lens mount. Once when I pulled the lens cap off, I twisted the lens off too.

You'll notice that these were shot with Lomo Turquoise. I thought I would try this first as it has a very wide exposure latitude.

110 comes in cassettes of 24 shots and there weren't very many shots from this walk around the block that I was thrilled with, so this post is a little sparse in photographic content. I think that's more on me than on the camera though.

I have a roll of B&W at the lab right now. If I get acceptable results from it, I'll probably spring for a Pentaz Auto 110 and cut down a reel for home development.

As usual, this roll was developed by The Darkroom in San Clemente.