Toy camera

{{short description|Simple, inexpensive film camera}}

File:Diana camera.jpg camera was made in Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s. The Diana+ and Diana F+ copies are currently produced by Lomography.]]

File:Holga1551.jpg camera takes medium format photographs on 120 film.]]

File:Swanson tennis center.jpg

File:Da Ci'en Temple, Xi'an, China, 2007.jpg, China) taken with an original Diana camera. Evident is the typical vignetting and blurring inherent in a Diana image.]]

A toy camera is a simple, inexpensive film camera. Despite the name, toy cameras are fully functional and capable of taking photographs, though with optical aberrations due to the limitations of their simple lenses.{{cite web | last=Rhodes | first=Margaret | date=October 30, 2014 | url=https://www.wired.com/2014/10/bizarre-toy-cameras-heralded-age-instagram/ | title=The Bizarre Toy Cameras That Heralded the Age of Instagram | work=Wired | publisher=Condé Nast | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20250223121603/https://www.wired.com/2014/10/bizarre-toy-cameras-heralded-age-instagram/ | archivedate=February 23, 2025}}{{cite web | last=Segarra | first=Lisa Marie | date=February 5, 2024 | url=https://petapixel.com/2024/02/05/meet-the-toy-camera-at-the-heart-of-the-analogue-revival/ | title=Meet the Toy Camera at the Heart of the Analogue Revival | work=PetaPixel | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20240621083018/https://petapixel.com/2024/02/05/meet-the-toy-camera-at-the-heart-of-the-analogue-revival/ | archivedate=June 21, 2024}} From the 1960s onward, there has been interest in the artistic use of such cameras or recreation of this style, both with cameras originally designed for children, and others originally intended as mass-market consumer cameras.{{cite book | last=Moschovi | first=Alexandra | author2=Arabella Plouviez | author3=Carol McKay | date=2013 | url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Versatile_Image/Mmv6AgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22toy+camera%22++%22optical+aberrations+%22&pg=PA245&printsec=frontcover | title=The Versatile Image: Photography, Digital Technologies and the Internet | publisher=Leuven University Press | page=245–253 | isbn=9789058679758 | via=Google Books}}

Many professional photographers have used toy cameras and exploited the vignetting, blur, light leaks, and other distortions

of their inexpensive lenses for artistic effect to take award-winning pictures.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/technology/circuits/08schiesel.html | title = Which Camera Does This Pro Use? It Depends on the Shot | work = The New York Times | first=Seth | last=Schiesel | date=8 June 2005 | access-date=4 May 2010}}

Toy camera photography has been widely exhibited at many popular art shows, such as the annual "Krappy Kamera" show at the Soho Photo Gallery in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City. Various publications such as Popular Photography magazine have extolled the virtues of the Diana camera in its own right as an "art" producing image maker. Several books have also featured the work of toy cameras such as The Friends of Photography's The Diana Show, Iowa by Nancy Rexroth, and Angels at the Arno by Eric Lindbloom.