Originally marketed as an inexpensive novelty gift item, the Diana has been used to specifically take soft focus, impressionistic photographs somewhat reminiscent of the Pictorialist Period of artistic photography, branded in contemporary times as Lomography.

However, its low-quality plastic lens has been celebrated for its artistic effects in photographs, normally resulting in a slightly blurred composition that can provide a 'dreamlike' quality to the print.

[2] The Diana first appeared during the early 1960s as an inexpensive box camera sold by the Great Wall Plastic Factory of Kowloon, Hong Kong.

However, with the development of inexpensive, higher quality consumer cameras such as the Kodak Instamatic, together with the declining popularity of rollfilm, demand for the Diana – even as a novelty gift – gradually disappeared.

Production of the Diana, its clones, close copies, and variants is believed to have stopped in the 1970s, though similar 35 mm box cameras were produced for many years thereafter by various companies in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China for use as promotional items.

Lomography also makes Diana lens adapters for several major DSLR systems, including Canon EOS, Nikon F-mount, and Micro Four Thirds.

The poor quality of the plastic meniscus lens results in generally low contrast and resolution, odd color rendition, chromatic aberration, and blurred images.

The San Francisco Art Institute seems to have been the first school to employ the Diana in its photography program in 1967-68 as a way of stimulating creative vision without undue reliance upon camera features and technology.