The Lomo Oktomat: a bundle of 8 lens fun

Yes, it requires 35mm film. Yes, it looks cheaper than a disposable camera. No, it doesn't have a flash. But who cares? The Lomo Oktomat's got 8 separate lenses which shoot in succession over 2.5 seconds, allowing a little extra creativity into your photographs. The $40 Oktomat produces some interesting shots, but we'll leave it up to you whether you think it's worth anyone's time and money. To help you make up your mind, we've included a link to the 500 photo strong Optomat Flickr group, from which the above shot is from.

[Image credit]

Read -- Lomo Optomat
Read -- Lomo Optomat Flickr pool

[kevink @ May 21st 2007 4:29AM]

I don't see anything much too special lookin threw the flickr pools. seems like it could be done with any camera in multi burst mode.

[unkn @ May 21st 2007 4:30AM]

I think it's pointless and dumb. There's no practicality of such a device. Not only that, but the pictures it takes are low quality, and so is the design.

[Jamie Marsden @ May 21st 2007 5:08AM]

Lomography aficionados tend to value different aspects of photography to the rest of us... My flatmate is an enthusiast, and has a site dedicated to it - www.jonheslop.com

He has some photograph taken with a similar camera that has four lenses.

[aMac @ May 21st 2007 7:45AM]

Ah, how the right-sided brain people think. These Lomo cameras aren't about being practical solutions or technical marvels. They're about FUN and creativity.

Yes any camera in burst mode can take multiple pictures quickly; yes they're made of plastic and sometimes don't work right, giving unexpected results; but that's what it's all about! You load up a reel of film, go out with friends and mess around, and part of the fun is not knowing what you'll get back after you develop the photos. You get the best pictures just shooting off-the-hip without all that pesky planning. Sometimes you'll get light spill from one of the lenses effecting another part of the film giving crazy colours too, so you just never know.

Remember this isn't a digital camera! This exposes a single frame of film 8 times to get the effect. Think outside the box and it's great stuff.

[aMac @ May 21st 2007 7:51AM]

Side note: Pretty sure this camera has been around for years. Why the interest now?

[Scooter @ May 21st 2007 7:55AM]

"from which the above shot is from" ?!

Oh, Conrad. Back to school for you!

[Joel @ May 21st 2007 9:16AM]

1. Prep: Hanging prepositions. Avoid ending sentences or clauses on prepositions. They make sentences end weakly. To remember the rule, memorize the sentence "Prepositions are weak words to end sentences on." In correcting the error, do not add a redundant second preposition:

AWKWARD: She is the woman he fell eternally in love with.

REDUNDANT: She is the woman with whom he fell eternally in love with.

RIGHT: She is the woman with whom he fell eternally in love.



AWKWARD: The school she graduated from is located in Germany.

REDUNDANT: The school from which she graduated from is located in Germany.

RIGHT: The school from which she graduated is located in Germany.

[JEllo @ May 21st 2007 9:08AM]

These are so freaking old... They've had them at Urban outfitters for years.

[Joel @ May 21st 2007 9:31AM]

Also worth noting, according to the item itself, it's an OKTOMAT not Optomat. OKTO = OCTO = 8

Conrad, no more 3AM posts, huh?

[Markarian @ May 21st 2007 10:49AM]

Lomography is a joke. It may be a philosophy of avant-garde photography, but it's heavily corporatized. Lomo is making tons of money selling crappy cameras with the slogan "Don't think, just shoot." When it really should be "Don't think, just spend." Almost all "Lomographic" effects can be duplicated in photoshop, and the cameras are of such poor quality, they offer no advantage over digital, often being more expensive. "Shooting from the hip" is a wonderful waste of film development service. Unless you have your own darkroom and a large trust fund to give you the time to screw around with Lomography, it really isn't worth it.

I mean, it's a wonderful business model. I wish I had thought of it "Let's take this awful camera from the former Soviet-bloc and make a hobby out of taking pictures that would make a professional photographer commit suicide! We'll take this camera that cost $10 to make and sell it to artsy hippies for $120 so they can take bad photos and post them on flickr or submit them to Gawker Artists and feel like they're creative!"

You know what I'd like to see? A lomographer's family photo album:

Twenty years hence...

44 year old Echo Boomer: Here, Dad, check out these picture's of Kratos' 8th grade 'graduation.'

75 year old Baby Boomer: Son, what happened to these pictures? They're all blurry and the contrast is bad. Let me get my glasses *a pause*. It looks like an album cover from 2003. I can't see anything in this pictures.

Echo Boomer: You don't understand, Dad, it's Lomography, it's about shooting from the hi-

Baby Boomer: Son, that's really nice, but I'm too old for this stuff. Mom and I will buy you a real camera for Christmas so we can actually get a good look at what our grandson looks like.

[aMac @ May 21st 2007 11:33AM]

Oh that's right, I forgot experimenting and doing anything 'arty' was stupid.

You're missing the point. The cameras are about being spontaneous. There's nothing spontaneous about photoshopping pictures together later and applying effects. Of course you can do that. People could also use Corel Painter instead of wasting money on REAL paints and canvas when you can do almost the same thing on the computer. They could even use Undo! So what? Sometimes it's just about the process and the medium.

[Mariana Dias @ May 21st 2007 12:28PM]

I totally agree with what aMac has been writing! If all of us here are photographers, how come some feel the need to say some ways to photograph are a waste and garbage? I have a digital camera as well as I have a Lomo Oktomat. I like photography and the fact that I can capture beautiful moments with both of these cameras. I would never buy a $1000 camera. Does that mean the ones who do are stupid? Or that the companies who sell them are making a business out of stupid people? I don't think so. People have different tastes and make different choices on what to spend their money on, I don't see what's the problem about it.

Thanks to the original poster for choosing my photograph to illustrate this post, if I wasn't looking for the blog references that brought so many views to it, I would have never found out about this website ;-) Oh and forgive me any possible mistake, but english is not my first language!

[Markarian @ May 21st 2007 2:40PM]

Actually, my point is that most "Lomo" cameras are overpriced, and the Lomography scene is perpetuated in large part by the Lomo company. Do I think the art itself is stupid? Not really. It's the financial aspect, the large expense of the Lomo cameras, which are supposed to be cheap and quirky, but end up costing the same amount of money as a mid-level digital camera in many cases.

aMac, I'm not saying some of the photos that are produced by Lomographic techniques aren't cool. I'm just saying they've commercialized it to the point where it seems to utterly defeat the purpose of getting one of those cameras.

[obiwan @ May 21st 2007 4:03PM]

I'll agree first that the lomos are all overpriced, but it didn't stop me from buying two of them. I have the clear actionsampler and the supersampler. The most challenging thing with these has been patience. It's film, so I don't shoot indiscriminately like I do with digital, and waiting to fill a roll on either camera is a bit maddening. I'm excited to see how the first roll on each turns out. I visited Russia in 1998, and a friend and I 'shot from the hip' (or with hands up high for crowd shots, or whatever, just no looking through the viewfinder) with digital cameras, and we had fun, and got some really interesting shots.
Photoshopping a real picture into a 'lomo' is pretty lame, and would definitely take all the fun out of it. The cheap lenses add a bit of uniqueness to your pictures, and shouldn't replace a 'real' camera. Have Fun! Buy one, and consider the price as an investment in a little adventure. The naysayers can go back to their digital cameras and photoshop and spend less time in the sun...

[Nikita @ May 21st 2007 10:45PM]

i, too love lomography, as i have several holgas, but why was this posted? this camera has been floating around for years, and there's nothing new or exciting in the post. A better one, perhaps, would have been an introduction of lomography.com, but even that is old news.

[tehjeebus @ May 23rd 2007 2:13AM]

Lomography expensive? Obvious statements from people talking out of their arses... I have purchased this exact oktomat for 40 and think it is worth every penny and a very amusing little camera... I have have several holgas (25 bucks for a basic holga expensive? what are you smoking?) as well as a 1000 dollar nikon with multile lenses that i have spent several thousand dollars on. That is the beauty of photography... you can make shots that are every bit as emotional with a 2 dollar camera as a 4000 dollar camera... every result is different depending on the look you are going for, with some being garbage and other being pieces everyone should see. people who quabble about prices of various equipment and other such nonsense are idiots... a talented photographer could produce breathtaking results from a 10 dollar camera while an amateur could use several thousand dollars worth of equipment and produce nothing but crap... photography is an art, not black and white but glorious shades of grey.

the equipment doesn't matter; the end result does