Lomography Diana for a novice photographer

Question

When a Lomo Diana F+ is described as 'Lo Fi', what are they really trying to tell me?

Fuzzy images? Unreliable shutter speed? Or something else? Would it make any sense to acquire one of these for a young, just learning, film photographer?

Answer 1

"Lo Fi" means exactly what it sounds like: Lomo is selling a camera that specializes in producing the sort of low-fidelity images you'd get from inexpensive cameras produced 50 years ago. I won't go so far as to say they're not for "serious" photography, because you can do serious photography with anything capable of gathering light from the outside and projecting it onto film. But I will say that a product like that is something of a specialty camera that isn't well-suited to what I'd call "general-purpose photography" because of what it does to the images.

For getting started with film, good, used 35mm bodies produced during the 1980s and 1990s that have many years of good service left in them are easy to find. Many will include a lens or two, cost about the same as a Diana and aren't limited to a single source for accessories. 35mm film continues to be easy and inexpensive to get and process.