This is a fun, easy to use, but odd looking camera from Lomography, that uses 35mm film to create panoramic style photos. This is done by the user pulling and releasing a cord on the side of the handle under the body of the camera. When you hold the handle and pull the cord the camera spins around to capture the 360 image. The harder you pull the cord, the more of the scene the camera will take in. You will hear a buzzing type noise coming from the camera that lets you know that the film roll is advancing forward, allowing you take the next photo. If you don’t hear a noise, you have probably not moved the camera out of ‘R’ mode. Once you have changed this setting the camera will work again.
When the cord no longer retracts into the camera handle, you will know that the roll of film is now finished. Another sign that the roll is finished is that the camera will also no longer turn on its handle.
It is easy to open the back of the camera to replace the film, you just need to push the slider on the side up to R (Rewind) then you turn the lever on the top of the camera until you feel the lever moving freely, then you just need to push down the lock on the side of the camera door, and the camera will open for you. If you do not move the switch to ‘R’ you will be unable to rewind the film. Then you pull up the rewind crank and pull out your finished roll of film, then load a new roll of film.
The only controls you have on the 360 Spinner is the Aperture setting on the side of the camera (underneath the ‘R’ option), you have a Sunny symbol (F16) and a Cloudy symbol (F11), this is the typical Lomography way of dealing with Aperture.
Normally, when shooting with this camera, you would hold the camera in a horizontal orientation, which will give you panoramic horizontal shots, you can use the spirit level on the top to make sure that the horizon line is straight. You can also try to get vertical panoramas by holding the camera in a vertical orientation, which can give very cool results. If the camera is not straight, this will result in wavey lines appearing in your photos, any change is angle will make huge changes to your photo. Holding the camera normally will mean that you appear in all photos. If you hold the camera above your head, you will not be in the photos. Should you wish to take a 180 degree photo, just pull the cord halfway out of the camera handle.
When it comes to developing the film, you can either do it yourself if you have a darkroom and the right chemicals or, more typically, you can bring it a lab and get them to develop it for you. If you do, make sure to tell them not to cut the film, as they will cut up your images. The machines in photo processing labs, cut the film at a uniform spacing, so this is no good for your Panorama images. You can cut them yourself when you get home. You can then scan the images to edit and upload them to the internet.
I will post some examples images I got from this camera, in the near future.
Thank you for reading my post.
Gallagher Photography 
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