Last month Lomography did this analogue marathon type thing on their website. Basically every day you had to complete a task to earn 5 piggies. Piggies if you aren't familiar with are basically redeemable points. 1 piggy equals £1/$1/€1. You can spend them on the online Lomography shop (following minimum purchase order rules). Anyways since I didn't have much else better to do with my time I did the marathon. It lasted 5 days so by the end I had 25 piggies in my account. Not wanting to waste my efforts and hard earned piggies I decided that it might be nice to buy a new camera. The hard part was choosing. I struggled for a couple of days with this decision. It was a pretty bad time for me. I repeatedly whined on at the boyfriend about it. He kept giving me different answers. It was awful. But in the end I settled and purchased myself a shiny red Sprocket Rocket.
Pretty right?
Here's the specs:
• Uses all types of standard 35mm film.
• Super-wide angle lens that captures the whole width of the film, including sprockets!
• Unique dual scrolling knobs make multiple exposures easier than ever!
• B-setting for long exposures.
• Zone-focusing.
• Hot-shoe for flash and built-in standard tripod thread
So far I've shot two rolls of film in this camera but I've only had one developed due to overwhelming lack of funds. But here's what I've shot so far.
I'm pretty pleased with the results. The day I was out shooting was beautifully sunny as you can see. I was actually giving something of a lesson to the boyfriend and a friend on my cameras but they're yet to collect their films. For all I've seen of how the Sprocket Rocket has been used by others I think for me it'll be something of a go to camera for landscapes and architecture. I'm off to Barcelona a week on Monday and I cannot wait to capture the city on my Sprocket Rocket.
Now I don't want to end on a low but I must say that handing this film in to the local Lomography store ended up being something of a poor experience and the subsequent service of getting the film back has been disappointing too. Having a member of staff with what I can politely describe as a bad attitude really does reflect badly on the Lomography brand and this hasn't been my first time witnessing this member of staff's attitude. Handing this film in got me the 10th stamp on my Loyalty card which meant I was entitled to a free pack of film. I was given the option of 35mm or 120 but only in their cheapest film, ISO100. Not much use to me as I have plenty left from previous boxes. Now the Loyalty card does say you can exchange it for more expensive film but you have to pay the difference. Something I was more than happy to do but was refused as apparently the member of staff couldn't put it through the till. I'm not an expert in business but it doesn't make sense to me to offer something if you aren't going to fulfil it. That's just poor form. Now I did expect that perhaps I'd have to wait a little longer for my film to come back to me considering it's from a Sprocket Rocket but I didn't expect my boyfriend's and friend's film to take longer than mine to be returned. Their films were just regular C41 processing from a Canon AE-1 and a LC-A+. Again not an expert in business but I do suspect that the main drive towards these Lomography Gallery Stores being a success is going to be film processing. However this isn't going to work well for them if processing continues to take a 10+ day turnaround. The other issue I had with my film happened when I finally got home to check the CD and it turned out to not work. My laptop wouldn't read it. This isn't an issue with the laptop as I put in other CDs and they all worked fine. So now after waiting over 10 days to get my film back I was stuck with negatives and a broken CD. Understandably I was angry. So I emailed the store, emailed the site and at their request emailed Lomography UK. Only the store responded. They offered to get a new CD sent out to me. I told them I wanted it delivering to my home address and I wanted digital access to my scans because waiting for a new CD that might not work again wasn't good enough. So this morning someone from the LomoLab sent me a link to my scans. But this whole experience has left a very bitter taste in my mouth.
Well that's rant over.
How do you like the photos?
Laters,
P x
These photos are great. I'm officially OVER lomography, for a variety of reasons... let's not get into it. ;) I have a whooping 50 piggies expiring next month but I'm not going to buy anything because I risk paying an almost 90% customs surcharge. And this is on the whole amount, (even what I paid piggies for), ridiculous. It's once bitten, twice shy for me. Speaking of the bad experience with Lomography, I think you should send them an email & tweet Lomography UK this blog post. Maybe they'll do something to make it up to you? (They really should!)
ReplyDeleteI think in my ranty comment I forgot to mention enough that these photos are really nice! Gosh I love the results. I've heard that this camera requires a lot of light, so I'm assuming there was ample when you took these? Because the sky & everything else looks brilliant.
DeleteI did actually end up emailing the website, the store and after repeated complaining tweets to their Twitter account was asked to email the LomographyUK email address with all the details. Which I did. It's actually been something of a weird thing really because initially the store helped resolve the problem the day after which was fine. But I took my resolution as coming from my email directly to them. So when the Twitter folks asked me to email them the details then I expected a separate response from them also. Mostly I expected just acknowledgement of them having received the email and the feedback being passed on to the relevant department. But when I didn't get that after over 24 hours I forwarded it again with another ranty paragraph added on. I then got told it was being passed to the general manager for the UK to respond to. And respond he did. As it happens I've also received another email from the store today with another apology and explanation for what happened as well as some very generous offers to regain my custom. I can't refuse them to be honest because they have now shown some exceptional customer service following this. It's just a shame that it took what it did to get it. I'm not the complaining type really but I've loved Lomography for years now so being let down by their service really upset me.
DeleteThat does sound incredibly frustrating about the piggies and the custom charges. It's a real shame there's no way around that really. Although I do find the minimum purchase order restrictions with the piggies pretty annoying too.
But thank you for the comments on the photos themselves. It was a really rare sunny day that we went out shooting so I was pretty lucky. It's like the Diana in that it's set up to work best with ISO400 as well and I was using that so that's probably helped to ensure the bright colours. It'll be interesting to see how it copes with cloudier days.
Ah booh, sorry to hear you got bad service!
ReplyDeleteBut the photos did turn out great :)
I agree, great photos :) Lomo are so bad with service i'm surprised they're still in business.
ReplyDeleteThese are stunning, the sky is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteI've never been tempted to use Lomography to get my films developed, I think they're overpriced but this has completely put me off, I can get a film onto a disc in half an hour at my local shop, unbelievable! Also, totally get what you mean about the attitude in the shop, the last time I went was part of a Lomo meet up organised on their site but they didn't seem bothered at all - perhaps because most of us knew more than they did lol. I think that they are hit and miss with their services though, one department will be fine but others not so much.