Lomography.com has added movie making to it's line-up! The LomoKino which is a hand-held 35mm movie camera that produces extremely short mini movies on whatever 35mm film you choose to load into this camera. Lomography.com has been releasing clues for the past several days about this new product....I knew it was going to be a movie camera of sorts. I was really interested in seeing it's form-factor because Lomography.com is known for mixing vintage styling with just the right amount of "new". The LomoKino looks really cool with it's winding film crank used to continously advance the 35mm film during exposure. I also love the camera's box form-factor - such a blast from the past...awesome! The LomoKino features a 25mm lens, a close-up feature that lets you get as close as 0.6 inches, a shutter speed of 1/100sec. continuous aperture settings from (f/5.6, f/8, f/11), viewfinder, tripod mount, flash hot-shoe, and a top-mounted red flag warning when the film is at rolls end.

New products from Lomography.com are always great and I really like what Lomography.com has done in the past but I'm just not that impressed with the results from the LomoKino. The mini movies posted in the "screening room" section of the Lomokino website look jerky, unfocused with too many dropped frames as well as frame overlaps. I'm sure this is a result of the user not the camera. It's a pretty good bet that the person filming these examples simply kept stopping the filming and then re-starting from a slightly different location or angle. A single roll of 36exp yields 144 frames per movie (at 3-5 fps) so in my opinion a tripod or at least holding the camera steady is a must as well as attempting to shoot the scene in one continuous shot scene or segment. The opportunity to show off this cameras was wasted based on whats posted in the screening room so I guess I should really hold off on my final judgment until this Lomokino ends up in the hands of the buying public.

Then there's the LomoKinoScope which is the device used to view your movie creation. It looks like it's about half the size of the Lomokino and features a winding crank on one side, a light gathering translucent window on the back and an eye piece on the front. Once the developed film is loaded inside the LomoKinoScope you simply look through the eye piece while pointing the device towards a bright light source, turn the crank, and enjoy your movie. It's like a ViewMaster.....re-invented!

I can't say that I would ever buy the LomoKino but it's a great to see Lomography continuing to push the use of film in new and exciting "retro" ways. The LomoKino sells for $79.00 and the LomoKino & LomoKinoScope Package sells for $99.00.