Assemble your own camera: Lomo Konstruktor

I recently got my hands on a camera construction kit and had the chance to assemble my own cam, what really got me stoked, keeping in mind that I haven't connected building some stuff and photography before. I am pretty crazy for anything you can shoot photos with, so I just gave it a try. The Lomography Konstruktor is a SLR camera and uses normal 35mm film. You cannot adjust the aperture, and also the shutter speed is not exactly adjustable. But this tiny, little thing still shoots pictures, pretty exciting ones too.

But let's start from the beginning, and back then, the whole thing didn't look like a camera at all. But still, there were the light chamber and the lens recognisable, as well as the case of the camera.

After one and half hour of fun with the manual and a screwdriver, the good piece was finished. If you wonder now if YOU could also do that, let me tell you: it is slightly more demanding than building one of those Ikea shelfs, but still not rocket science, so nobody should have real difficulties building the cam.

As you can see in the picture above, the viewfinder is on top of the camera and look "into" the light chamber from above. The two wheels on both sides of the cam are here for rewinding the film and for getting to the next frame. Apart from focusing, you can swich between two modes of adjusting the shutter speed. For daylight shots there is the "N" mode, for indoor or night shots you choose the "B" mode. The difference between these two modes is the shutter: in "N" mode, the light is falling for 1/100 of a second on the film. The "B" mode makes the whole thing pretty experimental: as long as you press the release, the film is exposed to light.

Now we come to a more tricky point: using the camera. As the manual doesn't provide a lot of information on this issue, I checked the internet and also found only little pieces of information about how to use the lomo. So I just bought a film and gave it a try...and immediately fucked it up haha. 

But after figuring out how far to turn the wheel for the next frame, how to strain the release it was very easy to use the cam. So after all I can say that it is indeed a exciting experience, no time-consuming adjustments, just snapshots. Additionally, the cam is small, lightweight and only costs around 35 euros. You can put it in your pocket and carry it everywhere with you.

So now, we come to the most important point: the photos. It turned out, that most of the time the pictures look really different from what I expected, so you actually have no clue how they will turn out most of the time. And exactly that is it, what makes the camera such a cool thing.

All the photos were made in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Text and Photos: David Tiefenthaler