December 9, 2005

Lomography Colorsplash Camera

Lomography Colorsplash Camera
Lomography Colorsplash Camera

This month’s review is for the Colorsplash by eccentric camera makers, Lomography. The main feature of this camera is the flash Color Wheel that lets you select from a variety of rotating color filters (12 included). These filters allow you to throw splashes of color into places where they may not normally belong. Basically you can screw up an otherwise nice normal photo, but in a good way. Depending on your distance from the object and the background of the scene this can give a lot of unpredictable and sometimes amusing results. For instance you could take a close up portrait with a red filter and still have a blue sky in the background. The green filter in average-dark indoor lighting is good for making you look deathly ill; it’s quite lovely really.

Another nice feature to this otherwise basic camera is the ability to take long exposures. Just hold down the shutter release button and it will stay open as long as it’s pressed down (like Bulb mode in an SLR) and the flash will fire when you release the button. The Colorsplash’s all plastic construction makes it extremely light weight, perfect for taking anywhere. Even the lens is plastic, meaning it’s not perfect and can yield some strange results. It likes to occasionally inflate peoples knees, bodies, heads, etc (not all at once of course); I usually end up with the big head. This is not a complaint; I actually like the quirkiness of the plastic. The only real complaint I have is that not all of filter slots in the Color Wheel are interchangeable and one of the non-removable ones in mine somehow got crinkled up and is now floating in there making it harder to change to different colors. This is probably something normally covered by the warranty, but since I purchased mine on eBay (although new) I lost the receipt email, and the only warranty I have is “Valid Only in Japan”. It’s been close to a year now and I still love this camera.

Lomography Colorsplash Camera