Toy camera

A toy camera is an inexpensive camera made almost entirely out of plastic, including the lens. They are usually made in China or the former Soviet Union. The Diana, LOMO and Holga are typically the cameras most associated with the term. The dreamy effects of using toy cameras has been documented in plenty of photo exhibits, such as the annual show in the SoHo neighborhood of New York. Various publications such as Photography magazine dated Fall of 1977 extolled the virtues of the Diana camera, a toy camera, in its own right as an "art" producing image maker. Several books have also featured the work of toy cameras, such as "The Diana Show, Iowa," and "Angels at the Arno" to name a few.

Nowadays we could add most of the older digital viewfinder cameras for VGA-format images (640x480 pixels) as well as most current novelty and cell phone cameras to that category since the quality of colours had been everything else but good. Of course combinations of simplest optical viewfinder, low resolution CCD chip and cheap optics like they were are more likely to enable something like lomography, not photography. Some webcams and cell phone cams still offer no more quality than these old-time digital fun cameras.

Links

 * ToyCamera.com
 * HolgaDirect - Holga Camera News, Articles and Interviews
 * Official Site of the Lomographic Society International
 * Diana Camera Site
 * Photography Review's Toy Camera Reviews
 * Picture Gallery using cameras such as Diana, Holga, Actionsampler etc www.picturenoise.com