Belomo Vilia Auto

Posted on November 3, 2008 by  By Andrew
tags: , ,

3000404938_d0e28a1a56

I bought a Belomo Vilia Auto from t’bay for the pricely sum of £9 inc postage from Moscow. The Belomo Vilia was one of the most mass-produced cameras ever made, with over 2 million being churned out over 20 years.

The auto version is a wee bit rarer, with a light sensor on the front, taking care of shutter speed depending on the light (in reality, it does bugger all!). There’s also auto-aperture, which again is useless. But some of the photos that are made by the Vilia are interesting..

…when it works. Mine unfortunately has a sticky shutter, which randomly decides to only open every so often, thus wasting reels of film to only get a few shots. Thankfully, Oleg from Moscow is sending me a new one completely free, and I’m allowed to keep the old one…yay!

Stirling High Street (taken with a slightly broken camera!)
Stirling High Street (taken with a slightly broken Belomo!)
A leafy Lane

A leafy Lane

Overall: I would stick with the standard Vilia, the cells on the auto versions are just too unreliable after 30 years.
If you fancy a vilia, they come up often on ebay, the seller I got mine from is : http://stores.ebay.co.uk/RUSSIAN-VINTAGE

Comments

  1. Posted by The Cosmic Symbol (vs. Holga comparison!) on December 10th, 2008, 16:58 (Reply to this comment)

    [...] round to actually taking some pics with it, and it’s pretty good! It totally makes up for the Belomo Vilia dissapointment I had last [...]

Reply

A few commenting guidelines:
Please stay on-topic
Do not insult people
Some HTML tags are allowed

Recommended Articles

Flickr Friday!

It’s that time again! TGIF!! Apologies on the absence of your Friday doses of Holga photos! I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! Here is a no-theme post from some of my favorite shots the past few weeks.
We suggest clicking through to that person’s Flickr page to leave a comment and check [...]

Holgapalooza Deadline Extension!

The deadline to get your entry submitted for Holgapalooza has been extended until Midnight September 12th, 2010!

CATEGORIES AND JUDGES:
1) “Roadside attractions” – Judge: Ted Orland
2) “Creatures” – Judge: Meg Birnbaum
3) “Nudes” – Judge: Francisco Mata Rosas
PRIZES:
Roadside Attractions
1st Place: $400 CASH, Lomography Perfect ($700 value)
2nd Place: $250 CASH, Polaroid 636 Paul Giambarda edition
3rd Place: $100 CASH, [...]

Photographer of the Month

This is a shout-out to anyone and everyone who shoots with a Holga – or any plastic/pinhole/makeshift/homemade/polaroid/holgaroid/shoebox camera for that matter!
We are looking for photographers from around the globe to be featured in our POTM section. Entering is simple, fast and easy. Simply find us on Twitter, follow us (if you aren’t already doing so), [...]