



The Camera itself

Today lets look at the Lavec Lt - 002 , 35 mm camera . Manufactured around 1985 by the Lavec company in Taiwan , this camera boasts nothing and leaves us with basically nothing . In short , it’s a poor man’s Holga . Nothing in this camera is good , and nothing in it is particularly interesting . Still , the question I had was , “Can we take any decent pictures with this ? ” Examining the camera itself we find that the camera body is made entirely of black plastic . It’s basically the “ TIME Magazine” free camera that came with a subscription to TIME Magazine . In this particular case though there is only the manufacturer name in the top corner of the camera body . The body is meant to look like an SLR with the iconic pentaprism at the top . However this is fake , there’s nothing but a hollow piece of plastic up there . As you can see the camera has a direct viewfinder off to the side . The lens is not removable , however it is made to look like the real thing with a red ring around the inside of the lens .

The lens is not removable , however it is made to look like the real thing with a red ring around the inside of the lens . The lens itself is a fixed focus , 50 mm prime . With no way to focus you are left wondering why the lens has the dimpled focusing ring . That again is the camera overselling itself . Instead if we do twist the lens we have a total of four settings for aperture . There are two aperture petals in this lens which oppose each other and narrow the aperture . This is useless for depth of field effect since you have no control over shutter speed . Rather this is to allow you to let different amounts of light in depending on how much ambient light you have .





There is one interesting aspect about this camera . It has a standard flash mount , and it works . This is unusual for this sort of “trashcam” I tried using the flash mount and found that my flash did work . To test this camera I had less than ideal conditions . Since I took this camera out in a cloudy day I loaded it up with Holga black and white , 400 ISO film . The shutter is probably between 60 / 1 – 100 / 1 and so I wanted it to have a fair chance . As soon as I had the film inside the problems started , and the fun began . I taped with electrical tape around the door of the camera . This sort of old and cheap camera never had good light - seals . I took a few shorts to advance the film and tried using it . Right away the camera had problems with feeding . I could hear the cogs grinding on the film sprocket holes . Even with this I was seeing the film advance so I decided to keep shooting and kept doing so . My shooting location was an orchard on a rainy afternoon for most of my pictures . When I got home I took a few pictures of pets inside the house , as well as a picture of my girlfriend in the grocery store The Results – Not good at all . The sprocket holes on the film were actually chewing away at the sprocket cogs on the camera . The film was of stronger material than the camera parts . This meant that almost all of my photos were double exposed halfway across the photo . Even wide open on a cloudy day with 400 ISO film the camera shot very dark . But ... there were a few good photos that did come out and of those you can see how this camera performs in all it’s blurry glory . It produced photos that cannot be replicated with Instagram filters . When combined with the grainy black and white film the camera produces very nostalgic images for those of us who used these terrible cameras back in the 80 s .