Belair: Put a Ring on it!

Out of all the flashes we make at Lomography, the Ringflash is probably the coolest to play around with. After Lomo Amigo Nout received his Belair he needed to test the fresh camera with some flashy fantastic fun. Want to do the same? Read this tipster!

The Belair camera is already one of the most promising cameras there is. It’s huge but not heavy and has some of the best features available in a medium format camera. Just the lightmeter on it’s own and the 6 × 12 format make this camera unique. Or as Lomo Amigo Nout said quite eloquently:

In the ‘flesh’ the Belair is even lovelier then I imagined and it gives me that great feeling you want to get from an analogue camera. I immediately feel like pulling my Charlie Chaplin outfit out of the closet and hide under a black tarp with one of those old fashioned flashes.

By now an army of Lomographers are putting their Belair to the test. But we haven’t seen anything about the Belair and the Ringflash. Which is why Nout decided to take up on the challenge; what happens when you combine the Belair with the Lomography Ringflash?

This awesome flash doesn’t immediately fit onto your Belair. Which isn’t that much of an issue. With some time, effort and creativity it’s quite easy to make sure the flash stays on your camera. The biggest issue in this all is the lightmeter. Because of the size of the flash it will be covered up a bit. Even though you can keep a 2 cm (aproximately 1 inch) gap between the flash and the lightmeter it will still think that it’s dark. Which is inconvenient if it means that the lightmeter will keep the shutter open longer then needed. Off course Nout knew a workaround to this issue!

1. Load the camera with a 100, 200 of 400 iso film.
2. Make sure that the camera is on a tripod (or on a wall, anything that ensures the camera to stand 100% still).
3. Put the wheel of the lightmeter to 1600 iso.
4. Take your picture and make sure no moving objects are in the frame (yes, you need to practice this a bit).

If you don’t anchor the camera your images might end up slightly blurry. Check out some of Nouts first pictures with the Ringflash:

Yeah, you will make some errors and it’s a learning process, but hey, it looks more awesome then ever if you manage to pull it off! Just do it, take those pictures and write a tipster about it.

written by mrmaart on 2012-11-30 #gear #tutorials #diy #tutorial #analogue-photography #photographer #tipster #nl #ringflash #netherlands #features #belair #analogue-cameras #lomoamigo #nederlands #camera-modification #nld #nout #ringflits #sjaaknout #regular-contributors #120-films #belairx612 #tipje #truuk