Unomat C300

My first camera was this very plastic point&shoot Unomat C300. It was given to me by my mother who had been taking photos for ages and probably wanted me to know that art myself. I didn't stick to it back then, probably because I was only 12 years old, the camera looked cheap and ugly and my photos were so much worse than those taken by my mother using Canons with a range of spectacular FD-mount lenses.


I still have that Unomat and learned to love it in a special way. Sure, it's a stupid camera with bad, plastic 30mm lens, it looks gross and most of the pictures turn out yucky. But it's got a charm of its own because it allows for so much freedom. It lets me reset my mind to a state when I really don't need to work on the photos that I take. It's even more liberating than medium format box cameras because there are just so many frames to fill on a 135 format film. It uses one standard shutter speed, probably around 1/100, has a built-in flash that works if you put 2 AA batteries in the camera, which I don't do. The aperture must be around 11 or 16 so it's best to use higher ASA film and shoot outside or at least in well-lit areas. No thinking is required to run this machine.

The Unomat usually sits on my camera shelf, in line with other not-too-spiffy point-and-shoots. I sometimes use it when I intend to shoot slides and cross them. It's quite lomo-esque in a good way. I hear that it's a nice alternative for the popular Vivitar Ultra Wide&Slim (and those started to be rather expensive after lomography moved in), but I think that's a bit far-fetched. I know UW&S to be a good performer whereas the Unomat lacks a lot when it comes to sharpness: it's kinda nowhere to be found. But, as has been already stated, it's a lomo-esque camera and sharpness is a whim of the modern, digitalized world.

I took one thoroughly cool photo with the Unomat -- the first below. The rest is just fun enough to show.