DIRTY DIANA

Just scanned a couple of negs from my Diana camera. If anyone hasn't had the pleasure of using a lomo camera, go grab yourself one at the lomography shop. I very much advocate the use of film cameras, especially 120.

Digital is all well and good - no one can argue with the cost effective practicality - but it's made people lazy. Everyone has a compact digital camera nowadays; social networking sites are flooded with poorly compositioned, incorrectly exposed snapshots... Everybody seems to love taking photos, but do any of these people actually like photography? Why take 500 snapshots, review and delete half, then store them on your laptop for the rest of eternity, only to be uploaded, downsampled, and compressed to a folder named 'random' on facebook... If you like taking photos so much, go buy a real camera, learn the basics, and discover how soulful photography can be. Don't buy that Canon 450D. Save yourself four hundred pounds and get a Pentax K100. Buy some out of date film. Cross process. Have some fun. Experiment.

Anyway, rant over. Back to Diana. There's a huge following for these plastic toy cameras these days. People have embraced and learnt to love the unpredictable outcomes, the imperfections and unrealistic results. I love it so much, I wrote an essay on it for my degree course. For some nice examples - head over to the Diana Flickr group. Here's a couple of mine.

Viva la revolucion!

I'M THE NINJABREAD MAN

Are people laughing at your mediocre standard-shaped gingerbread men? Well put a stop to it, with these ninjabread men biscuit cutters!

Molded from food-safe ABS plastic, and only $7.99. Get yours here (in September).

TYPODARIUM

Daily inspiration with 365 fonts from 180 foundries and designers from 30 different countries, all packed into a neat little calendar. Nice. Get yours here.

STICK AROUND

Your walls are looking pretty dull, right? You also have a strange fetish for stickers? Great! Me too. So let us head over to Hu2 Design, and peruse their rather creative vinyl wall decals. From simple decorations, to thought-provoking green living reminders and educational infographics.

D-LUX

Feast your eyes on the new, limited edition, Leica D-Lux 4 Safari!




Lush, right? This sexy little number boasts 10mp, a 3'' lcd, optical stabilizer (for those bumpy safari jeeps), f/2.0-2.8 DC Vario-Summicron ASPH high speed, extra-wide-angle 24-60mm equivalent zoom lens (for you camera geeks), face detection, an intelligent fully automatic shooting mode, and you can even shoot in raw. Sweet! And it comes with this cool bag.

Get yours here.

Edit - I have recently been informed that this is infact a rebadged Panasonic LX3. Still sexy, none-the-less.

FITSZU

I take a lot of joy from the little things in life - being made beautiful. Everyday objects, used without care or attention, turned into conceptual pieces of designed elegance, begging to be looked at, touched, used, and enjoyed. Here's a nice little example from the online shop Fitszu Society.

The coolest way to light a ciggie I've seen for a while.
Found on thedieline.com