The Lomography Sprocket Rocket - a fun plastic panoramic camera keeping film photography fresh.
Released around 2011 the mostly plastic, Lomography Sprocket Rocket is an interesting and fun, double frame 35mm panoramic camera with a plastic wide angle lens that exposes the entire width of the film so that the image area on the negative also includes the films sprocket holes, thereby providing the photographer a vehicle to create some very unique and dreamy looking photographs. This is due not only to the double frame panoramic format but also in part to the plastic ultrawide angle lens that is generally sharp in the center of the photo and soft and distorted at the edges. These plastic cameras are often categorized as toy cameras due to their plastic build quality and simplistic design as well as their so called lo-fi results. Though for myself, as a photographer who loves shooting with cameras such as the Agfa Photo reusable or the Holga 120n, I hold a deeper appreciation for them, not as toys but as photographic tools. A tool which provides a different perspective to a new or familiar subject and a further means of photographic expression.
 
|
| The Lomography Sprocket Rocket - capturing 35mm double frame wide angle panoramic photos with sprocket holes. |
|
| Comparison of the image area between a standard 35mm frame on the bottom to the double frame and full width image area of the panoramic Sprocket Rocket - top |
|
| Top photo is a sample of a negative produced from Lomography Sprocket Rocket which takes up the length of of 2 standard 35mm frames and also allows the image spill over onto sprocket holes of the film |
|
| Which in turn produces a resulting photo which looks like this. The image takes up the the entire negative area top to bottom. |
Since returning to the film photography scene in the Spring of 2020 I have accumulated quite a few cameras starting with a few classic Pentax film cameras and a couple of Rollei 35's but over the last year and a half or so I have added cameras of much simpler form such as the Agfa Photo reusable film camera, the Holga 120n, the Kingpin pinhole camera and the Lomography Sprocket Rocket. Using these simpler designed cameras has really helped keep photography fresh and interesting for me. I can now visit somewhere that I have been to on numerous occasions and get a whole new perspective and the Sprocket Rocket most certainly fits that bill.
|
| I have driven and stopped by this horse farm several times but this time I used the Sprocket Rocket to get a whole different perspective. |
Even though the Sprocket Rocket has been available since 2011 and has been written and talked about for years it's still a newer adventure for me and is a camera that I really enjoy using and have obtained some really interesting results. This camera has only two aperture settings - f/10.8 and f/16, two distance settings 0.6m to 1m and 1m to infinity, and two shutter settings 1/100 of a second and bulb. I only shoot black and white film and by using this camera under brighter conditions - when possible - and sticking with 400 speed films such as Fomapan 400, Rollei RPX400 and Ilford HP5, I feel that I have obtained some very nice results.
|
| Sandy Hook - NJ - Shot on Ilford HP5 |
|
| Lambertville - NJ - Shot on Fomapan 400 |
You can catch more of my Sprocket Rocket photography by visiting my YouTube channel or my website photo gallery. All the photos featured in my Sprocket Rocket video and this site gallery were taken using Ilford HP5, Rollei RPX 400 and Fomapan 400. I developed all three film stocks in either Clayton F76 plus or Rollei Super Grain film developer.
|
| Click on this link or photo to catch my Sprocket Rocket YouTube video |
|
| Click on this link or photo to view my Sprocket Rocket Gallery |
You can also catch more of my film photography @fasphoto on Instagram - Once again thanks so much for viewing my blog (-: