Sometimes you don’t really need much. Sure it’s nice to be carrying around an slr or rangefinder on holiday. Knowing your lighting is being expertly metered or you’ve been waiting to try out that new wide angle lens in a city you’ve never visited before.

But somewhere along the way you get bogged down by the burden of choice.

While agonising over which lens to use, the light slips away at golden hour or while trying to decide if you want a faster shutter speed or greater depth of field in a shot, the person you saw carrying flowers through the busy streets has disappeared forever.

At first glance this camera might be mistaken for a disposable point & shoot, which is a fair comparison as it ticks all the same boxes. However this camera is designed to be reloaded again and again. It does have some of the exact same features you’d expect to see on a disposable camera such as a plastic lens, a single battery flash and the only user controls are the shutter, winding wheel and a push to charge flash button.

The entire camera body is littered with instructions and tips to get the best out of it. It comes preloaded with Lomography 400iso colour film and is ready to shoot the second you’ve ripped the box open!

The economic and environmental advantages to this camera are fairly obvious as you’re not throwing away a whole camera every time you finish a roll of film.

Unloading the camera is the easiest thing in the world as the camera winds the film back into the film canister, so you just open the back and drop it out. Reloading however is a bit more tricky. The first time I loaded my own film took me 5 mins and 3 attempts to get it right.

You have to get the film to catch on the smallest catch I’ve ever seen on the take-up spool. Wind on the film so it’s wrapped around tight for at least one rotation.

Then, while maintaining that tension close the film door and flip the wind-on switch. While maintaining that constant pressure you have to wind the whole roll from the canister to the take-up spool.

This will actually spin the film counter all the way up to the frame count your film can take. Flick the switch back over, wind the camera and you’re ready for your first shots!

While packing my Ricoh XR-7 I just could not find any of my wide angle lenses for it. As a result I felt a little restricted using a 50mm when I had such interesting streets and beautiful vistas around me.

I found a local camera shop called Alla Rotonda in Trento and they had a nice selection of vintage lenses

They had a 28mm k-mount lens for around €60 which I was about to get it when I saw the bright blue Lomography Simple Use Camera packaging out the corner of my eye, and it was only €27!

I decided that the small camera was a better use of my time than having to swap out lenses on the Ricoh every 5 mins (turns out this was one of the best decisions of the trip) and I also picked up a 3 pack of Kodak Ultramax 400 to keep the fixed iso camera loaded with throughout the trip.

I thoroughly enjoyed using this little camera while on holiday as it really stripped down my shooting needs to the most basic of decisions, allowing me to make images but also be present in the moment and not bogged down in a quagmire of settings and menus. The camera does what it does and it’s just a learning process to strip everything down to composition only and hoping for the best.

By the end of my 3rd roll of film that I shot as a daily carry I’d gotten used to hand placement to avoid my fingers obstructing the lens like they did on those first 2 rolls in Italy.

As a daily carry, the simple use has proven to be an effective and fun camera to have on my person. The colour gels are actually a lot more interesting to play with than I first thought they would be. 400 iso film is available pretty much anywhere you can buy film, so you’re not short on emulsion options (thinking of loading up some Ilford XP-2 or Kodak T-max next time)

If you’re looking to have an affordable every day camera then this is the one for you. It’s simple to use so you can just focus on what matters, enjoying yourself!

You can get more information about/buy your own here on Lomographys website!