Another week and another new camera to play with. This time it is the Lomography Society International’s Sprocket Rocket. The camera has great old-fashioned styling (it is a rip off of an ancient German model) and despite being made entirely of plastic, feels a bit more substantial than a Holga or Action Sampler.
It has a few tricks up its sleeve too. You can wind the standard 35mm film both forwards or backwards (or not at all for multiple exposures on the same frame). You can also choose to wind on a full frame or less than that. This gives crazy, endless panoramas. The wide angle (plastic) lens shoots 106 degree panoramas onto a space on the film usually taken up by two standard exposures. Therefore, a 36 exposure film only gets 18 shots.
The obvious feature of the camera though (its given away by the name) is that the sprocket hole area of the film is also exposed. This poses no problem for the people developing the film as it’s the same process. What is different is scanning the film. Most scanners hold the film with the sprocket area and as a result, you’ll need a DigitaLiza or to be handy with tape and bits of anti-glare glass. (I chose the former). Because of the shape, they’ll also be a bugger to get printed.
I’m pretty pleased with the results, but am very aware that they are a style that has to used in moderation as the novelty wears off pretty quick. Let me know what you think…
I look forward to trying it with a black and white film for some scenic panoramas. I’ll post the results, but not TOO soon…
Barnaby Nutt 
I guess that for me, I'd have to find a project that enabled me to produce a set of images which utilized the peculiarities of the camera. So for example, the fallen apples probably does just that for me; it's a wide angle lens so you get good depth of field whereas some of the other images, although interesting, are not so individualistic. B&W might be more effective and “cleaner” too given the black sprocket holes and thus produce some striking images. But as always, it's all about personal preferences! With respect to scanning, you really need “anti-newton” glass as opposed to “anti-glare”. If you are using a flat bed scanner, you also need to find the height above the platen that produces “in-focus” scans and then arrange for the negative to be at that exact height. As always though, I find your experimental style very inspiring.
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