Last summer I took about fifty instant pictures with my Diana F+, mostly pictures of my friends at the seaside and my dogs at home. I'd love to try my SX-70 cameras, but since Polaroid/Impossible film is so expensive, I guess I'll keep using Fuji Instax Film the most. 

I took these two pictures with my Olympus µ [can't remember which series], a camera I really liked, too bad it doesn't seem to work, gotta get myself a new battery [which I can't seem to find anywhere].

Tomorrow I'm leaving for a "mid-week weekend" at the seaside with B, hope I'll get to try my brand new LC-A+ Russia Day and maybe some multilensed camera or the Fisheye, we'll see!

We don't have skies that blue so often, 'round here. I took this pictures on a hot, early August sunday morning. We went to the city centre, we had breakfast at some pavement cafè, we looked at the shop windows, at the people and the dogs passing by, and slowly reached what I guess you could easily call my city's most famous castle.

As we're all quite artsy people, we decided to visit the castle, which also happens to be my city's Museum of Ancient Art. I'm more into 19th and 20th century art, but I've also developed an interest in Christian religious art throughout the centuries since I was in junior high. There were some paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari, who was a 16th century artist coming from the place I spent my childhood in, so I'm always glad whenever I have the possibility to take a look at some of his work.

I was particularly impressed by a series of Vanitas paintings, most likely my favorite theme in art [I didn't mean to sound macabre]. I especially loved an almost black and white triptych from circa 1500, just a dark, gray piece, plain oil on canvas, but I've never seen anything like dating so old. I was stunned. Unfortunately, I didn't have a pen with me [which happens something like, one in a million days], so I couldn't take note of all the paintings I wanted to do a little research on: I guess I'll just have to visit the museum again - which is something I love doing!

Also, there were a few amazing stained glass works from the Middle Age from Germany. Amazing indeed, if you're any like me, they teminded me of some German Expressionist woodcuts [another of my art-favorites].

My Konica Pop [the red one] never fails me. I love it to bits. All these pictures were taken on a Lomography CN 400, which yelds quite vivid colors, add the wonderful Konica Pop's lens, et voila, colors will just pop out of your pictures! Sure the sun did help a lot, you know, everything looks perfect on sunday morning, and the city feels so much better in August. We should have summer on sundays all year long!

When the courier came on Wednesday morning with a 5kg package from Vienna, I really was over the moon. I signed the papers with shaky hands, said thank you to the DHL man, and run back waving a cutter like I was in some freaky rapture-moment, like those crazy people from some rural Indian village.

I couldn't believe the ActionSampler was so lightweighted, the Fisheye had such a pretty packaging [the cutest ever], the Diana Mini was that mini, the Pop 9 Gold was that shiny, the LC-A+ Russia Day was that... wow. It just is too tiny, too red, too lightweighted, just too much.

Obviously, this one is the camera I'm most thrilled about. I can't wait to take it somewhere cool and see what it can do. I love the red leather it is wrapped in and the cyrillic logo. The cable release, being this short, might only be useful for the B mode, it doesn't seem that useful for selfportraits, but I can't tell yet.

I must admit I was quite worried about the lens: its description read that "it comes with the original Minitar lens", but I wasn't sure it what either the Russian lens or its Chinese copy [though this dubt is just due to my paranoid nature, as you would expect a Russian lens from a camera named "Russia Day"]. It actually was the Russian Lens, that's the first thing I checked once I opened this box!

All the other plastic cameras arrived are fun and colorful, and I'd love to spend some days at the seaside just to try the ActinSampler and the Fisheye out! If I could only find somewhere to store all my cameras and rolls now...

Latest news: Lomography just published another article of mine! I wrote it some time ago and almost forgot about it! Here's the link to my article, Animal Experimentation with the Diana F+ and Diana Instant Back, I wrote it just for fun but it would be great to have some feedback! Too bad Lomography.com published it with enlarged pictures, now you can't almost tell what's in them!