Diana+

My fellow photon Rachel gave me Lomography’s Diana+ for Christmas! Some of you may recall this little cult gem, others may know one of its more famous emulators, the Holga camera. (I currently base my introductory-level photography class entirely on the Holga.)

The web is peppered with sites devoted to the Diana, but few contain hard technical details about the Diana+’s four step (and I mean step not stop) aperture settings. Pinhole aficionados will be thrilled to know that Lomo’s reproduction of the original camera, which interestingly is also made in China, includes a fine pinhole. The other apertures are marked simply as sunny, overcast and cloudy. With a bit of poking around on the web, the following aperture estimates for each of these settings seem to be the consensus:

• sunny … f11
• overcast … f8
• cloudy … f5.6
• pinhole …

HOWEVER, [can of worms being opened] looking at the actual openings on the camera, and applying this formula:

N = f/D

where N is the aperture (which by convention is written as f/N ), f is the focal length, and D is the diameter of the opening or entrance pupil, I get:

•  sunny … f/32
•  overcast … f/22
• # cloudy … f/11
• # pinhole … about 8 stops less than f/22

So! Off go to test all of this out. Anyone out there with any experience (empirical rather than anecdotal please!), please comment.