Lomo Starts Production Of 1970s-Style 110 Film

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Party like it's 1979.

Lomo, the surprisingly successful maker of crappy plastic film cameras and accessories, has just launched a 110 film for its Orca camera. The emulsion is called Orca 110, and it is a high-contrast B&W film rated at ISO 100.

110 film cameras were the phone-cams of the 1970s. Born in 1972, the format is way smaller than 35mm film, and was packaged into cartridges for easy loading and safe handling (yanking the film prematurely wouldn’t ruin the whole roll, for example).

Because it was small, the tiny negatives had to be blown up much more than larger formats to make prints, making the results blurry and full of giant grain. Like phone cameras, if you shot in bright sun you’d get away with it. But anything darker turned out terrible.

The small format also meant small cameras, though, and 110 was pretty popular. I was given one for maybe my 13th birthday and I loved it. It was super 1980s in design, and you pulled the candy-bar shaped camera open to use it and push-pulled it to wind on to the next frame.

110 remained the king of crappy photos until Kodak came out with Disc film in 1982, which put even smaller negatives onto a cardboard disk and probably took the worst photos of any film camera ever.

The test shots from the new Orca 110 look pretty great, though, and as B&W photos are only helped by grain, your results should be good wherever you shoot. The film can be pre-ordered now for around €7.

Source: Lomo
Via: @PetaPixel
Lomography Orca

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