Christmas brings good cheer. And some interesting presents. My wife bought me a Spinner.

This is The Spinner:

I had never heard of one of these. Basically, it’s a very simple 35mm camera on a handle with a string pull. How simple is it? It has a plastic lens, two aperture settings (“sunny” and “cloudy”), a way to rewind the film, a bubble level (of dubious utility), and that’s about it.

What does it do? It takes split second 380° panoramas:

You hold the Spinner up by its handle, pull the string, and let go. The camera rotates about 380° in less than a second, and pulls film past the shutter for that period of time. The result is a panorama that’s about four 35mm frames in length. This length varies a bit, for a number of reasons, but you end up with about nine panorama shots per roll of 36 frames.

There are a number of interesting things about the images produced. The start and end of each image is slightly overexposed as the film moves slightly slower at the start and end of the shot. Unless you hold it perfectly level (which the bubble level is supposed to help you do, unless you hold the Spinner above your head so you can’t see the level) the image has a slight wave effect in it. And the film is exposed right to the edge, including over the sprocket holes (yes, the emulsion goes that far):

My god, panorama purists would have a fit!

Anyway, being a Lomography product, the focus is on new fun ways to take pictures, and not on technical excellence. Basically, it’s simple and fun, and produces images that reflect this.

I like it.

Here are the images from my first roll taken around the local town on a pretty deserted Christmas Day afternoon. You can see the variance in the images, which is sort of nice. Standing in the middle of roundabouts is an excellent location for shooting these.

Click to enbiggen.