I almost had this idea. While working on this review I thought, there’s really less to me than meets the eye. At eight years old, I fell in love with photography. It took that one first glance at a Kodak 126 Instamatic camera and I was in love. Not, you know, like how you fall in love with a guy at a stop light. Photography had me not only hooked, but grounded in a deep true long-lasting love. But when I had to actually sit down and say something about it, I’d stumble over myself. Still do.
This Woca has me somewhat stumped as to where to begin. The basics: It’s basically a Holga with a glass lens. Don’t let that glass lens fool you though, the camera’s still wonderfully shitty. The lens is focusable and has sweet little symbols for distance from close to infinity: A head and shoulders, a couple (male and female symbols same as what’s used for public restrooms) with a weird little baby, a choir and the Matterhorn. Just above the lens is a slider that selects aperture for what appears to be flash and cloudy, or sunny. The shutter has one speed – no “b” setting . It also allows for multiple exposures, accidental or otherwise.
The sides have metal thingies that you slide up to unlock, for access to the film chamber- you have to pick at the back with your fingernails in an effort to get a grip on it. Speaking of the back, there’s a sliding switch – well it’s supposed to slide, anyway. It points to either 12 or 16. You choose. If you set it to 16, the idea is that you have a cropping frame inside the camera that crops to square images. Mine’s stuck on 12. But I don’t have the frame anyway. The film spools sit inside the camera very loosely. I shoved a piece of cardboard inside to tighten things up. I suspect someone has added some light blockers inside – and they’ve done a good job of it! These added “walls” ensure that the entire roll of film won’t be exposed each time you open the shutter. This might be why the frame counter window slider is stuck in one position. Ha! The frame won’t fit inside anymore – hence the need to stick to one image size. Mystery solved!
That 60mm Optical lens is a true performer.
Next time I’ll try it with a flash.
Woca…say what you will about the pics, but it’s a cool name. Sounds like an obscure foreign currency; “1500 Woca…how much is that in dollars?”; or maybe a near-extinct peoples, scratching out an existence in a sere landscape at the edge of the world: “The Woca went from water-hole to water-hole in the trackless wastes…”