Lomography LC-A Minitar-1 32mm f/2.8 Art Review

Lomography LC-A Minitar-1 32mm f/2.8 Art Handling and Features

The Lomo lens is a very compact, light, pancake design for Leica M rangefinder cameras. It has rangefinder coupling and will activate the 35mm and 135mm viewfinder frames. It is a full frame lens, but can be used on a wide variety of full frame and crop sensor cameras via an excellent selection of adapters. The lens was provided for review with a Sony Alpha 7 full-frame camera body.

The adapter provided for Sony has the added benefit of an additional helical mount, so closer focusing can be achieved compared with using the lens alone. The lens itself focuses down to 0.8m and there are provided click stops at 0.8m. 1.5m, 3m and infinity for simple zone focusing. Full rangefinder focusing is available on suitable Leica cameras.

The zone focusing fits in well with the Lomography concept of freedom of expression, encouraging random shooting and a carefree approach to image making. This may be especially true at wider apertures, where the lens vignettes heavily by design, can hardly be called sharp, but sharpens up as it is stopped down.

The lens is well made in metal and consists of 5 elements in 4 groups. There is a 22.5mm filter thread and a tiny aluminium screw in lens cap is provided. The finish throughout is of a very high standard.

There is no AF as the Minitar is fully manual both in terms of focusing and its aperture control. The aperture set remains set until it is changed, but with the various focusing aids available on the Sony body it is not difficult to gauge the focus point accurately. This is fine when required, but as the logic of the lens is to encourage freedom of shooting and expression, does not necessarily have to be utilised.

Handling is very efficient and all the controls work smoothly. Random shooting Lomography-style is also a welcome pleasure and a release from the normal strictures. There are several pinhole and other un-sharp lenses on the market and clearly these fill a niche where some very impressive creative photography is being produced. It does prove an interesting exercise to be released from the normal quest for technical excellence and concentrate instead on shooting freely, even randomly.

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