Taking your first picture with a Diana Camera.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 3:02AM The Diana camera is easy to use, once you get past the fact that you will need to make a few decisions when taking photographs.
Film: Pick a film and load the camera. Start out with ISO 400. This refers to the “speed” of the film or how sensitive it is to light.
Color or Black&White? Your choice. Color is probably easier to start with, since you can have a lab process the film, but the downside is that it will probably be more expensive the more you shoot. I love the traditional look of B&W film. If you process your own film (very easy to do), you can cut the cost per roll down, and really indulge in your new photo addiction.
The controls:
Shutter: N- about 1/100 of a second, B-Bulb stop, shutter will stay open as long as you hold down the shutter.
Aperture: Sunny, sorta sunny, cloudy, P (pinhole)
Focus: 1-2m or 3-6 feet, 2-4m or 6-12 feet, 4m-infinity or 12 feet to infinity.
How to take your first photo.
Pick a subject
Judge the approx distance to your subject and set your focus accordingly.
Take a look around you and judge how bright it is. Is it sunny, sorta sunny or cloudy?Set your aperture.
Make sure the Shutter selector is on N.
Look through the viewfinder and frame the photo (don’t worry about it too much, the viewfinder isn’t accurate).
Trip the shutter. Advance the film to the next frame.
Repeat as necessary.
Reader Comments (5)
Hi Kai.
I just came across your website and am thrilled to have found it, since I just bought myself a new Diana + camera.
I have a question regarding the film advance. I loaded the film using your EXTREMELY helpful video, but I'm having a hard time figuring out where I am on the film. I'm using Kodak T-Max 400 BW film, and I saw some weird symbols and stuff before I ever saw any numbers. It felt like I had to advance way past where I should have (especially compared to 35mm film) but that could just be a medium-format issue I need to get used to.
Anyways, I'm trying to figure out where I need to advance to. I finally found a "2" on the film... is this the second picture? Where was the first? it felt like I had to advance forever between some circle symbols and the 2 that I finally got. Ack! How many turns of the advancing wheel is normal between takes? How many turns is normal for advancing the film to the first shot? (I'm using the 16-pic adapter for now... not sure if I'll do that on another roll or not.)
Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.
The leader on the film is very long. It takes some winding to get there.You will get used to it when you've shot a few more rolls of film. It sounds like you did overshoot that first frame. On Kodak films, you will see some arrows indicating that you are coming up on the first frame. Other manufacturers use different marks to indicate the approaching number. Fomapan uses little dots. Kodak has type spelling out the type of film. I don't know how many turns it does take. I'll have to count next time I load a roll. At any rate, just wind slowly, be patient, those numbers will come!
Thanks so much for the help! I started working through the numbers and figuring out how much you have to roll between exposures. It's certainly a lot more turning of the advancing roll than I would have guessed.
Oh, and I keep forgetting to advance my film, so I have a bunch of double/triple/quadruple exposures. LOL Guess I'll see if any of them work out.
hi Kai! I'm from Indonesia, and i see your video @ Youtube,and it's so helpful!
I just bought my very first diana f+, and i'm beginner...I wanna ask about some colourful small filters that included in the package, where will I put those things? I guess those filters work on the main color of the photo, is it right?
and about shooting with shutter lock at night, how long i must put that shutter lock on diana?so if I shoot my brother, my brother must still in front of the camera?haha, i'm still confused about so many diana things...
thanx before for your answers....I'll be so happy, if you want to answer it...
Hello arya. The filters go in front of the flash. They will colorize the photo if you are using color film. For time exposures, it is difficult to say how much exposure you will need. It depends on how much ambient light is lighting the scene. I find that for 400iso film, a range between 1-2 minutes is usually a good starting point. If you have time and the film, I would also shoot 1 exposure at twice the amount of time, and another exposure at 1/2 the time. This means, that if you started with a 1 minute exposure, try another at 2 minutes, and another at 30seconds.