Why Lomo has a bad name.

This camera is marketed by Lomo, yet has nothing to do with the Lomo Kompakt Automat manufactured in the former Soviet Union. The Lomo LC-A was a cheap version of the Japanese Cosina, but came with a great, quality lens, and an automatic light metering setting, all of which made for great picture-taking. The draw of the Lomo LC-A was that it took quality pictures, but without necessitating the type of strained aperature-calculation and focus fiddling that typical single lens reflex cameras require.

This camera, however, is basically a plastic toy camera made in China that has had the "Lomo" name slapped onto it. You can find this same Chinese-made plastic camera elsewhere, under different names, and for less money.

But what does it do? The front of the camera has four plastic lenses arranged in a grid. When you press the shutter button each of the four lenses expose the film -- one after the other. The picture frame that results is the same size as a normal 35mm print. The difference is that you will have four sequential shots, stacked like this:
1 2
3 4

with each of the four images separated within the frame by a black border. Your average one-hour photo place might be confused by this at first, and mess up the printing of your pictures (which has happened to me more than once). However, the four images take up no more or less space than a normal 35mm print taken with a normal 35mm camera.

The camera requires no batteries since the frame-advance wheel winds up the spring motor that enables the camera to work. The "viewfinder" is actually just two flimsy pieces of plastic on top of the camera that act as a sort of bulls-eye target. This system, however, is not accurate whatsoever. But accuracy isn't what this camera is all about.

There is no flash on this camera, nor the ability to use one with it. Since it takes four sequential shots, the use of a flash isn't really possible. That being said, your best bet is to use this camera outside on a very bright day. Even so, I was able to take great pictures with this camera at night by taking pictures of bright subjects, such as a neon sign and the well-illuminated window of a Chinese food restaurant chockful of hanging roasted ducks.

The frame counter on the bottom of the camera isn't really terribly accurate either. You usually find yourself taking pictures until the frame-advance wheel won't crank anymore. Which, due to the flimsy plastic mechanism of the camera, makes you worry that you might accidentally break the camera when you try to wind it after the roll is done.

The CyberSampler is supposedly an improvement upon the Lomo ActionSampler, but in reality, it isn't. The only thing "new" about the CyberSampler is it's name and appearance (it now comes in pearlescent! Oh boy!). It looks high-tech, but is still just a wind-up toy camera.

The next version of this camera that Lomo came out with, the SuperSampler, at least comes with a unique lens configuration. The four lenses of the SuperSampler are in a vertical row, like this:
1
2
3
4
Like the CyberSampler, the SuperSampler doesn't require batteries, but instead of a frame-advance wheel, the SuperSampler has a pullcord that advances the film. The SuperSampler also comes with two different exposure rates (either taking four pictures in 2 seconds or in 0.2 seconds), which the CyberSampler could really benefit from.

In the end, the CyberSampler is a novelty camera that isn't novel. You used to be able to buy the same camera (with a different name) from one of those novelty companies that sell plastic barf and whoopie cushions.

Even entry-level digital cameras from a few years ago offered a "movie mode" that would take a series of pictures and allow you to show them in an animated sequence. A much better four-shot camera would be a SuperSampler or a Nickelodeon PhotoBlaster (if you can still find one).