Last Xmas I bought my kid a Lomo Action Sampler Camera ($30) from OKOK on Broadway.
For the uninitiated, an Action Sampler Camera has four lenses, all of which take staggered shots within 2.5 seconds of the photographer pushing down the shutter. Each lens has a different focal point, so each print has four varied shots of the action as it is happening. It sounds more confusing than it is. It's really just a very basic plastic camera.
We took the camera to the skatepark and got crazy effects. Each frame of one photo set shows my son doing a portion of a basic melon grab off a little jump, but the quality is so lo-fi and weird... slightly out of focus and very bright.
I loved the photos so much that I've graduated to the next level of Lomo, the Colorsplash ($75). This thing is the bomb! It allows you to take flash photos with long exposure times and color filters over the flash bulb. So, say you're at a club with friends and you want to document the night out: The Colorsplash turns people in the foreground crazy colors (red, green, purple, blue...), while allowing the background to stay normal. And if used during an overcast day it still turns the foreground bizarre colors, only with bright sky backgrounds. It's really amazing.
So what's next? Perhaps the Lomo Fisheye Camera ($54). It takes round "fisheye" 170-degree-angle shots, and who doesn't love fisheye photos?
