I know it ain’t cheap but I thought to spend about S$200 on such a special newly invented weird camera is worth the pain. Well that’s what I thought … until some friend told me it is more like a copy of another camera. Huh? Really? I’ve never seen one! So he gave me this link and some four letter words came out flying from my filthy mouth. 😛 I must be blind or do I not see this Spinshot 35S being mentioned in the ‘History of 360 Photography’ section in their microsite? Okay … fine. Since the Spinshot costs so much (as mentioned in the website), I think the money spent on this toy is pretty okay. *cough*
The Spinner 360 arrived yesterday but I was just too busy and tired at the end of the day to take any photo of it. Most of you might have already seen how the packaging is like but if you haven’t … here it is …
Photo leeched from LSI’s website because I ripped mine apart and dumped it in the office bin already.
A video by LSI on how to use it.
Pretty neat looking packaging eh? Thank God they didn’t include some darn heavy book like what they do for Diana F+ cameras. Phew! There is a thin booklet (instruction manual), a looooooooooooooong poster-like thingie, a stack of small pano format sample photos, a lens cap and a rubber ring inside. For a moment I was puzzled why the need of the rubber ring and after reading the instruction manual (which I think should include some illustrations) … I figured out that the rubber ring is meant to be a spare. You are suppose to remove the rubber ring (already one attached to the cam) from the camera ‘when rewinding or when you are giving the camera a rest’. Hmm. Why? Maybe to prevent it from losing elasticity?
Played with it for a while (without film loaded) and I guess the reason for that heavy metal lens hood is to help ‘balance’ the camera when spinning. I tried spinning it without the hood and it seemed less ‘stable’. Hmm. Okay. Fine. But does that mean we have to remove the hood when we wanna put the lens cap on? Hmm. Nevermind. I’ll do without the lens cap then.
There is switch on the camera to allow switching of aperture (like the Holga). You get to choose between Sunny and Cloudy … and also a setting to choose when you are rewinding the film. When set to the ‘rewind’ mode, the ‘shutter’ is closed and thus no light will be entering the camera from the front. If you (accidentally) left the switch on the ‘rewind’ mode … and start shooting your next roll … you better be prepared to get some weird stare from the guy at the lab when you collect your roll later. Yeah … it is gonna be blank! 😀
Now … since the camera doesn’t actually have a shutter … how does it work? First I tried spinning the camera with the back open and got really puzzled (yeah almost flunked all my science papers) how it works … since the light will be entering thru the lens all the time. What happens after taking a shot? Do I have to quickly get the lens cap on (which is hell because you’ve to remove the hood first)? I guess it doesn’t really matter because there is only one small ‘slot’ where the light is gonna get into the cam (onto the film) and by the time the cam stops spinning, it should be exposing only the part between 2 (long) frames.
Not sure how much I’ll be loving this camera (the thought of having myself in all the shots scares me!) but I do enjoying holding it in my hands. Hahaha! Maybe I can teach Fitzand and let him use it instead … but then where am I suppose to hide? Behind the trees? Behind the pillars? I can’t be flat on the floor because my tummy might still appear at the bottom of the frames! Urgh!
Weekend … where are you?!!!!