The Lomo LC-A 120 is good. This particular Lomo LC-A 120 was bad, because I broke it. And despite that, I want one of my own.
That is the summary. The longer version involves a brilliant lens, a frustrating focusing system, a trip across Botswana and Namibia, a spring that ended up somewhere it should not have been, and a £400 price tag that stings.
I went into this not sure what to expect. I love 120 film but I usually dislike point-and-shoot cameras, so the LC-A 120 had to win me over from a sceptical starting position. It mostly did.
What it is
The Lomo LC-A 120 is a point-and-shoot, auto-exposure 120 camera shooting 6x6 frames. It is the medium format big brother to Lomography’s better-known LC-A, the 35mm cult compact. It is not a new camera: it launched in 2014 and has been around for about a decade.
The features, such as they are:
- Sliding lens cover that doubles as the on/off switch. Slide it down, the lens opens and the camera is on. Slide it up, closed and off.
- Zone focusing with four positions: 0.6m, 1m, 2.5m, and infinity. That is it. Four zones, no more.
- ISO dial to tell the camera what film you have loaded.
- Shutter button, wind-on button, multiple-exposure switch.
- Battery compartment on the bottom, film door on the side.
That is the whole camera. It is not sophisticated and it is not trying to be. Lomography designed it to be a camera you can pick up and shoot without thinking, throw in a bag, take on holiday, travel with. By medium format standards it is genuinely portable: about double the size of the original 35mm LC-A, but still small for a 6x6 camera.
The lens, which is the whole point
Because the LC-A 120 has been around for a decade, much has already been written about the lens, and the consensus is that it is very good. It is a Minigon XL 38mm f4.5.
38mm on 6x6 is pretty wide, which is exactly what I like. The f4.5 is reasonably fast, fast enough in principle for some shallow depth of field. So on paper this is a camera I should love: a wide, fast lens, which is my preference in any format.
The catch, which I will come back to, is that you have no control over the aperture. The camera chooses everything. So while the lens is fast enough for shallow depth of field, you cannot actually decide to use it that way.
![PLACEHOLDER: the Lomo LC-A 120 in hand, showing the sliding lens cover and the compact body]
How the exposure works (or how we think it works)
The LC-A 120 is full auto with no overrides. The camera decides the exposure and you cannot argue with it.
Internally it has five apertures and a range of shutter speeds, none of which are directly selectable. There are various theories about how it combines them. The most popular theory is that apertures and shutter speeds are linked, so that a given exposure value maps to a specific aperture-and-shutter-speed combination, with no way for you to bias it one way or the other.
Does it matter how it works? Not really, because you cannot change it regardless. You cannot say “give me a wide aperture now for shallow depth of field.” The camera does whatever it decides. You accept that, or you buy a different camera. For a point-and-shoot designed for grab-and-go shooting, the full-auto approach is the entire point.
The loading complaint
Some people find the LC-A 120 fiddly to load. You get a fingernail into the film door release, pop the pips at the bottom, load your film, and clip everything back up.
On the copy I had, the wind-on had a specific problem: the non-return ratchet did not seem to be working, so after winding, the mechanism had a tendency to spring back on itself. On a 120 camera that is a genuine annoyance, because you can lose your frame spacing. I suspect this copy had seen a fair bit of use before it reached me, because this was happening before I did any of my own damage to it. More on the damage shortly.
The trip: Botswana and Namibia
I had a work trip to Africa lined up, leaving the country the day after I started the video, and the LC-A 120 seemed like the perfect travel companion. I rarely get much opportunity to take photographs on these business trips, but a small, convenient, grab-and-go camera might make it easier to grab the odd frame.
Lomography had sent me some films to use, but they were all 400 ISO, which in blazing African sun would have been a struggle. So I started with a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 instead, a much less sensitive film better suited to the conditions.
Maun, Botswana. The gateway to the Okavango Delta. At this time of year the Delta and the whole of Maun are dry as a bone. Cloudless skies, beautiful deep blue, peaceful despite Maun being a busy tourist town (busy in this part of the world being a relative term). I wandered my local area taking frames, careful not to stay out too long without sunscreen. The LC-A 120 being 6x6 gives you 12 frames per roll, and those 12 frames fly by when you are not doing any exposure calculations. I photographed a boat that was a long way from any water, among other things.
A confession: I forgot to change the zone focusing on several shots, which is a recurring hazard with this camera. More on that below.
Namibia. Out to the famous Dune 7, a couple of snaps and an obligatory selfie. Then on to the salt pans and Namibia’s famous flamingos, switching to a roll of Lomography Lady Grey 400 black and white. Then to Swakopmund, where the waves were splashing right up over the pier, and a roof terrace where I loaded the Lomography Color Negative 400.
![PLACEHOLDER: a Botswana frame on Ektar 100, showing the deep blue cloudless sky and the LC-A 120’s colour rendering]
What I thought of the results
I was genuinely impressed, with caveats.
When the lens hits the sweet spot, the images are tack sharp and look really good. The lens lives up to its reputation. Sharp, characterful, lovely colour rendering, nicely judged auto-exposure. When everything lines up, the LC-A 120 produces medium format frames that are properly good.
The problem is hitting the sweet spot reliably. Because the focusing is zone-based with only four positions, and because you are guessing the distance and setting one of four zones rather than focusing precisely, it is genuinely difficult to consistently nail focus. When you get it right, the results are mindblowing. When you get it wrong (or forget to change the zone, which I did more than once), you get soft frames.
It has a slightly Holga-ish quality in use and image. There is some vignetting, some character, a grab-and-go looseness to the whole experience. But the crucial difference from a Holga is that lens. A Holga is rough because the lens is rough. The LC-A 120 is loose in handling but the lens, when focused correctly, is sharp and serious. So you get character without the lens being the limiting factor.
I love the way it handles colour. I like the way it handles exposure. As a point-and-shoot that does not mess about, it is genuinely good.
The bit where I broke it
I should be honest about this. Lomography lent me this camera as a short-term loan: try it, make a video, send it back. I did not show this in the video originally, but I broke it.
At the end of a roll, there was suddenly a spring sticking out where no spring should be, and no chance of loading another roll. I do not know what I did. One minute it was working, then I put a roll through, and at the end of that roll it was broken.
I maintain, with no evidence whatsoever, that it was not my fault. Lomography said they had never seen this particular failure before, which could mean it was a freak accident, or could mean I found a brand new way to break a camera. Given that nobody else seems to have reported this failure, let us generously assume freak accident.
Either way: they lent me a camera and I broke it. Sorry, Lomography. They very kindly told me to just send it back and not worry about it, which was decent of them. I am sending this one back because it is broken and I do not want a broken camera.
The verdict, and the price problem
Here is where I land. I want one. Not this one, which is broken, but one of my own.
The lens is the reason. When it is sharp it is mindblowing, and the auto-exposure is genuinely good, and the whole package is easy and liberating to use. A point-and-shoot in medium format is a rare and exciting thing.
But there is a real tension, and it is about money. The LC-A 120 costs around £400 (about $450). For a plasticky, zone-focusing, fully-automatic point-and-shoot, that is a lot of money.
The tension plays out like this. Part of the appeal of a camera like this is that it feels cheap and cheerful, the kind of thing you can take to the beach and not worry about getting sand in. I recently took my Bronica S2A on a family holiday (there is a piece on that coming) and loved shooting it, but I felt nervous getting it out on the beach. The LC-A 120 should be the answer to that: a camera you can be careless with.
Except it costs £400. Which is a lot of money to be careless with. It is not a Holga you can treat as disposable. It is an expensive camera that happens to feel plasticky, which is the worst of both worlds for the take-it-to-the-beach use case. You get the anxiety of an expensive camera with the build quality of a cheap one.
So the price stings. If it were £150 it would be an easy recommendation as a knockabout travel camera. At £400 you have to actually want it, and you have to be willing to look after a camera that feels like it should not need looking after.
Despite all that, I want one. The lens wins. I came back from Africa with frames I am happy with, and that is ultimately what matters. I will probably buy one, take it on holiday, take snaps of the kids, and accept the price as the cost of having a genuinely good medium format point-and-shoot.
Who should buy one
If you want a medium format camera you can shoot like a point-and-shoot, with a genuinely excellent lens, and you can stomach the price, the LC-A 120 is a lovely thing. The images justify it when you get the focus right.
If you want a knockabout beach camera you do not have to care about, this is too expensive for that role. Buy a Holga, or a cheap folder, and save the money.
If you need control over your exposure or precise focusing, this is the wrong camera entirely. It is full auto and zone focus, by design. Buy an SLR or a rangefinder.
For the right person (someone who wants medium format quality in a grab-and-go package and values the lens above all else) it is genuinely good. Just be prepared to pay for it, and to look after it better than its plasticky body suggests you should need to.
Big thanks to Lomography for the loan. Sorry again about the spring.