Oktomat is a lomo camera with eight separate lenses.

Lomo pictures have unique color, shadow and surprising combinations, says Fiegl.

The cameras look old-style but they are avant garde, like the building downtown, says Sally Bibawy, LSI's managing partner of production and brand development international.

"Lomography is a philosophy. Don't think, just shoot then see what happens," says Charlie Perez, a French singer in a Shanghai nightclub.

Perez, who has lived in the city for three years, has a black Fisheye2 Lomo and likes to shoot friends at the bar, his girlfriend, his cat and scenes in Tahiti.

"I used to depend on DC (digital camera) but I am fed up with the format - square pictures, quick replay and a few good pictures among hundreds of shots," says Perez.

The Fisheye2 features a nearly 180-degree wide-angle view and barrel distortion, just like a fish's view. It has a multiple-exposure function that allows several images in one frame. One of his photos shows a woman inside a man's body and two images of Perez himself.

One trick, he says, is to turn the camera upside down and shoot, then turn it right side up and shoot again, creating symmetrical images. He likes to sneak up on someone, call their name and capture the surprised expression and "weird faces."

Over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, "happy accidents" and alternative film processing are considered part of the Lomographic technique.

Horizon is a panoramic camera with view angles of 120 degrees horizontal and 45 degrees vertical.

Besides the Fisheye, Lomo also markets the Lomo LC-A+, a reproduction of the classic model born in Russia; the Diana, which produces dreamy images with super-saturated colors; the Oktomat with multiple lenses; the Colorsplash with a rotatable flash color wheel and nine optional colors; the Holga with color-flash technology and light-leaks effects.

Most are manufactured in Jiangxi and Guangdong provinces.

Joan He, who works in advertising, became a Lomo two years ago and owns a Holga and a Diana.

She's keen on "happy accidents."

"I like the uncertainty of lomography and it's worth waiting to see the final results," she says.

On a trip to Xiamen, Fujian Province, she closed in on a cat but the feline ran before she pressed the shutter. She thought she had missed the shot, but she hadn't. She captured a "fantastic" effect of a blurred streak with high contrast and a mysterious feeling.

She likes trying different combinations of color, light and angles and created a remarkable image of a Xiamen building at sunset.

She prefers Lomos to complicated cameras, calling them more "natural." After shooting 10 rolls or so, you get the hang of it, she says.

"It's not only photography but the lifestyle," says LSI's Bibawy, whose temporary tattoo on her arm says, "The future is analogue."

Lomo fans have online forums like lomography.cn and often upload pictures there or on picture-sharing Websites like Flickr.

Users can directly fetch the digital format of lomo pictures from almost all Kodak outlets.

Lomowalls are popular. The biggest Lomowall to date was installed in Beijing in 2004 during the Lomo World Congress.

In the Shanghai store, people can party on the fifth floor with Lomowalls on all sides, pictures of upbeat, quirky, charming aspects of everyday life from around the world.

(Shanghai Daily July 14, 2009)