Holga, through the plastic eye
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
picture taken using iPhone
Recently I have acquired a Holga, the 135 BC to be exact. This is a cheap plastic camera built for 35mm negative. Obviously the build quality is nowhere near the SLRs that I usually use, the lens are made of plastic instead of glass and the body prone to light leaks; but there is something charming about all these. They are unpredictability and the fact that you have to estimate A LOT.
The Holga looks like a point and shoot camera at a glance, however I think it requires a solid understanding of aperture, speed and focus. Even more than normal SLR, because you won’t be able to see what you are focusing on and stuck on 2 modes of aperture.
Briefly speaking the camera has an aperture of f/8 or f/11 depending on the cloudy/sunny switch, speed of 1/100s or bulb and 4 modes of focus. Like I mentioned previously, there is no way to preview the focus therefore our estimation is the only tool that we can use. The 4 modes are either 1m, 2m, 6m or 10m from the subject.
The film that I used were Fuji Xtra 400, I developed them in a store then scan them with my negative scanner.
Get Creative!
The biggest reason that has driven me into using a Holga is to get creative and practice my composition. By taking away all the SLR precision settings and huge amount of storage, I was able to focus more on composition and think carefully about exposures and focus.
The picture on the left is taken using bulb shutter speed. If I remembered correctly it was around 1 second. I held the shutter button for about 1 second then I let go.I didn’t have a tripod at that time hence I hand-held the camera. One tip get usable images with the Holga, one will have to be very steady and avoid breathing while taking the shot because the plastic body is very light and prone to movements. Then again, maybe you do want some movements to for the sake of creativity 
.
Another way to get some more interesting images is by utilizing Holga’s multi-exposure. With this camera you will be able to take multiple shots on a single negative frame. This is similar to the multi-exposure mode on proper film SLRs such as the Nikon F-801s. The image on the right shows 2 exposures on 1 frame.
Last but not least are light leaks, which under some circumstances can be used to our advantage (perhaps not so much on the left image), but the image should give you some idea what the leak would look like on this type of Holga.
So, after 2 rolls of film, I had quite a bit of success, most of the pictures are usable and only a few with severe exposure errors rendering them unusable. See the gallery below for some of my favorite shots. It’s quite certain that I will continue shooting more interesting things using the camera.
