Holga & I ...




Although I bought a couple of Holga cameras last year with idea to shooting lots of 120 film through them, I actually only got around to using a Polaroid back which fully managed to occupied me ... I so love Polaroid ...... but this year I loaded a Holga 120N with some out of date Fuji S160 film and went out to play ...and I am so pleased that I did ...... this is so liberating, I cannot recommend it enough, if you want to be creative, put the digital camera down, load up some film and go and do some really creative stuff.

For anyone who doesn't know what an Holga is, it is the the most basic camera you are ever likely to put your hands on unless you make your own that is, it is made out of light weight plastic including the lens which gives a really hazy retro look (F8/F11, 60mm which is a fairly wide angle with medium format film) , the "controls" are two apertures F8 & F11 and one shutter speed 1/100 sec, focusing is crude but effective from portrait to landscape, you manually wind the film on or not as the case may be....multiple exposure is possible and most desirable ..! They take 120 film but can be modified for 135 if you want to try something different and have the image going past the sprockets. The first thing you need to do is think about being a creative photographer not a camera operative, this is tool that works for you, it is not a modern DSLR with lots of features that claim to make you more creative but actually do the opposite.



It is worth going onto You Tube and looking to see how to prepare a Holga for use, there is plenty of good information on there which is better seen than read, but in brief the thing to do when preparing the camera for use is to throw away the lens cap because otherwise you are likely to leave it on, take out the the film mask inside the camera so you get the merging of images and vignetting, also use plenty of black tape to seal the back of the case and stop light leaks, although this is personal choice the odd leak adds to the uniqueness of each image in my opinion so do this as much or as little as you want. The film to use is again subjective, a lot of people use ISO 400 because it has more latitude and better for lower light conditions but basically in bright light you have F8 or F11 at 1/100 sec so so ISO 100 would be fine. Out of date film is also OK in fact more favourable as the unstable chemistry adds to the effects that can happen whilst taking the image.

One other neat thing I discovered is that the Holga I was using also has a "bulb" switch which in the on position makes the shutter totally manual, what amazing possibilities that presents for further creativity.


The whole category of this type of camera is called "toy" but this infers the cheapness of purchase price and build of the camera in no way does it infer the images are of some inferior quality ... depending upon your scanner the size of scan from a 120 film is larger than that from a 60 MP digital camera, but in comparison the image created was totally down to the photographers imagination, skill and also a bit of luck or circumstance as sometimes the things that get added to images such as light leaks, lens flare, aberrations, film characteristics etc put the magic back into what we create every image will be unique. One tip on scanning is to try different scanner settings as there isn't a determined break between images your scanner will try too find one ...... some times with good results but some times not the other option is to scan the film as a strip and then crop where you want to, it can add for some very interesting combining of frames, basically one 120 roll of film could give you endless possibilities ... that is between 12 and 16 images ..... not the hundreds you will shoot with a digital camera it makes you think very carefully not only taking the image but then how you are going to present it back, I love the images I have created that mix quite different subjects and therefore change the whole possible interpretation of the what is presented.

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