From Russia with Lomo love
Taking a film camera on a holiday to Moscow not only helped capture great shots, but left a lasting happy memory, as Rod Edwards discovered
Rod Edwards took a film camera on a holiday to Moscow and captured great shots and happy memories
Winston Churchill once described Russia as ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ This hasn’t changed. As a photographer, I’m always looking for new and exciting places to explore, and Moscow with all its romance and mystique seemed the ideal destination for my first Russian mission.
I’ve been shooting digital for over 15 years. It’s convenient, automated, fast and predictable. However, I feel that this pixel perfection can sometimes lack the creative soul that I had grown to love with film. Digital photographers have tried various ways to emulate the look of film with the latest cameras, software, actions and presets. However in all honesty, if you want the classic film look, the only real way is to shoot traditional film.
I wanted my images of Moscow to be different from other stock shots I’d seen online. What better way to do this than with a camera whose roots had grown from the very foundations of Mother Russia: the legendary Lubitel.
Over the years, I’d owned and used several classic Russian Lubitels, but while I love their charm, they are far from reliable. For my trip to Moscow I needed an analogue workhorse that I could not only count on, but one that still retained the character and feel of the original Russian classic. The Lomography Lubitel 166+ Universal promised all of this and so much more.
Covert work
Moscow is renowned for its rich architecture and ornate metro stations. Komsomolskaya was first on my list, and I needed to work undercover as tripods aren’t allowed. I covertly chose the best position, perched upon a balcony overlooking the main entrance escalator, and set up my mini tripod on the shallow ledge.
Since this is a fully manual camera with no internal meter, you’ll need to either follow the exposure table on the back, use a handheld light meter, or use an app on your smartphone to determine correct exposure. I have an iPhone and used the free ‘MyLightMeter’ app which proved to be surprisingly accurate.
Lomography has re- engineered the classic 75mm Cooke Triplet glass taking lens and removed the original self-timer mechanism. This has improved the ergonomics as the controls on older Lubitels were a little cluttered for bigger fingers. Metal rings around the lens control the aperture (ranging from f/4.5 to f/22) and shutter speeds from 1/250sec to 1/15sec plus Bulb. This is adequate for most situations, but can be a little restrictive to your creativity.
With this in mind, I’d bought a set of neutral density filters on eBay for less than £15 that gave me two (ND2), three (ND4) and four (ND8) stops neutral density range. The beauty of the Lomography ethic is that you are not after the highest resolution glass, but a low-fidelity equivalent – so pennies can be saved on cheap filters in aid of Lomo creativity. The low fluorescent light levels emitted from the ornate chandeliers allowed me to shoot wide open at 1/60sec. However, I wanted to blur the people, so I screwed all three filters together making a six-stop ND and not worrying about any colour cast from the lights as I knew I could easily correct this when I scanned the colour negatives. Then, 1sec at f/4.5 and I was ready. I set the focus to the infinity click and carefully fired off half a dozen frames.
Rules go out the window
Next was Red Square and St Basil’s Cathedral. With the standard Lubitel lens, and so much open space, it was easy enough to move back far enough to fill the frame with the cathedral. However, at eye level the composition lacked foreground interest and I needed some way to draw the viewer into my picture. Looking around I saw interesting white lines on the floor that led towards my subject. I crouched down, placed the camera on the cobbled square and looked down onto the ground glass screen. I wanted to shoot wide open to throw the foreground completely out of focus. This is the opposite of what we’ve all been taught in ‘photo school’, but I’m shooting Lomography style, so the rule book goes out the window.
I patiently waited for the crowds to clear and give a nice clean line leading towards the cathedral. I was shooting on Lomography colour negative 100 film, which is known for its sharpness and fine grain. Its vivid colour reproduction was also perfectly suited to the bright sugar candy paintwork and vivid blue sky of St Basil’s Cathedral.
The afternoon light was getting lower in the sky and with this came lovely warmth and softness. I stumbled across a beautiful vintage carousel, standing forlorn and lonely in the late sunlight, and knew I had to photograph it.
The Lubitel has two lenses: the larger is for taking photos, while the smaller one above it is for viewing. The taking lens focuses anywhere from 0.8m to infinity with four click stops. The image is composed and focus confirmed on the ground glass screen. This has been greatly improved in Lomography’s redesign, as the pop-up viewfinder has a perfectly flat ground glass which covers the entire image. With the older classic Lubitels, the light fall- off was so bad towards the edges that it was hard to both focus and compose the image. In order to improve focus further, Lomography has also redesigned the flip- down magnifying lens and introduced a split-screen fresnel in the centre to confirm perfect focus. By focusing on the horse’s head, I hoped to minimise the depth of field when shooting wide open, thereby accentuating the wonderful bokeh of this lens. Shooting on a slow, 100 speed colour negative film made the colours beautifully saturated, and the wide aperture introduced some additional edge softness and vignetting.
Another iconic view I’d seen so many times was the view of the Kremlin beside the Moskva river. The traditional shot needed more of a short-telephoto lens while the Lubitel is restricted to its fixed standard lens. However, hidden away in my bag I had the Lomography 35mm ‘Lubikin’ adapter. This allows you to shoot with 35mm film, and since it exposes the entire film area, it also introduces a rather cool ‘sprocket’ effect to your panoramic images. This is what Lomography is all about, real film special effects in camera!
As dusk approached, the scene slowly came to life. Predicting how the traffic trails would appear on the final film was tricky. I had become used to shooting digital and knowing what you’ve got on location before you leave. Not so with film; there’s always a little mystery, black magic and the sense of uncertainty until the film is returned from the processors. To achieve the traffic trails, I set the shutter to Bulb exposure and carefully pressed the cable release. Exposure was 4sec at f/5.6.
A meditative experience
The following day, I arrived at the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour before sunrise at 4am and
had the entire place to myself. It’s a popular location with tourists, and shooting alone at this time in the morning in such a spiritual place was an almost meditative experience.
I loaded a roll of Lomography X- Pro 200 Color 120mm Slide Film and, since I liked the texture of the paving stones, I once again chose a low-level viewpoint to add foreground interest. As I waited for the light, a wonderful, almost herringbone, cloudscape formed above the golden ogee towers of the cathedral. It was perfect, and I triggered the shutter with the tip of my finger at 1/15sec at f/4.5.
I was unsure of how accurate my iPhone light meter would be for colour transparency film since it is notoriously tricky to expose perfectly in high- contrast situations. I’d have preferred an incident meter, which would have allowed me to measure the light falling on the scene. However, I framed the shot and bracketed a little above and below the suggested settings to be sure exposure was spot on.
I also wanted to try a few ‘Lomography style’ shots using the somewhat experimental technique of cross processing. I therefore rewound the unfinished roll of Lomography X- Pro 200 Color 120mm Slide Film and reloaded a similar roll that was to be cross- processed in C- 41 colour negative chemistry. I’d also deliberately tried letting in some direct sunlight through the red filtered frame- counter window, which caused colourful light leaks all over the image. The grain was the size of golf balls, the contrast was high and the highlights a little fried – but all part of the ‘Lomo Look’.
While the light was warm and relatively soft, I detoured back to a location I’d visited the day before: the world famous Bolshoi Theatre. The fast-running water from the fountain heralded a long- exposure blur technique and so I screwed on my neutral density filters. The great advantage of twin-lens reflex cameras is that the filters didn’t affect the view through the ground glass screen, so I could easily compose the shot. I stopped down to f/11 as I needed some depth of field, and with an exposure time of 4 seconds blurred the water into almost a perfect mist.
Capturing a piece of history
While wandering the back streets, I came across this tatty old Russian Lada Riva. It appeared to be held together with just rust and fresh air, but to me, it epitomised the hardship and changes that Russia itself had endured throughout its recent turbulent history. Shooting at f/4.5 introduced the vignetting effect that I had grown to love, and the soft edges, close focus and shallow depth of field added to the overall dreamy feel of the photograph. I chose to tilt the camera slightly diagonally to introduce some dynamism and movement to an otherwise static subject.
These days, with automated cameras taking away much of the need for technical ability, it’s all too easy to produce countless dull and lifeless photographs that lack soul. Returning to the rudiments of traditional film cameras was a refreshing change. It necessitated a slower, more contemplative approach that can only help to push the boundaries of your creative vision. So if you want to test your true ability as a photographer, I would recommend throwing away the established rule book and trying some Lomography-style imagery. Rules are made to be broken and with the Lubitel you’ll have the right tool to shoot exciting, fresh imagery that will make you a better photographer. Mission accomplished.
For more of Rod’s work please visit his website at www. rodedwards.com. For more information about Lomography, to view their free online magazine, shop and to join their community, please visit www.lomography.com.