And perhaps best of all, the camera uses medium format film which enables the Holga to make surprisingly sharp photos with beautiful depth. Guesstimate the subject distance as best you can and fill the frame with an interesting, well thought out composition. This can often add to an image by separating what you have “sharp” in the center from the rest of the scene, giving it depth. I tend to standardize on 400 speed film as, with the nearly f8 lens, full sunlight is needed for slower film. You’re not going to get lost in a mountain of features and options like you might with other cameras.

Holga Enlargers, an inexpensive darkroom enlarger with two available lenses and several masks/negative carriers for both 120 and 35mm formats. It was intended as an inexpensive all-purpose camera for the Chinese working class, a market which at the time preferred medium format film.The 120<\/span> GCFN<\/span><\/b> in black is a Holga <\/span> G<\/span><\/b> lass Lens Camera with a built-in <\/span> C<\/span><\/b> olour <\/span> F<\/span><\/b> lash which has four different colours (normal, blue, red and yellow). Production of Holgas continued in China through the decades until 2015 when the factory making them closed down. This is more of a passion project for me, so the fee is nominal and helps me cover the significant costs associated with purchasing and developing the film. First iteration – before I realized there was a switch that changed the length of the shutter speed. However, the rapid adoption of the 35mm film format, due to new foreign camera and film imports, virtually eliminated the consumer market for 120 roll film in China.

The World Through A Plastic Lens is absolutely bursting with the finest medium-format Holga masterpieces that the world has ever seen. Although the Holga has a few settings, they don’t really do all that much – apart from, that is, the bulb switch. The Holga camera was initially introduced to the Chinese public, in 1982, as an inexpensive camera for everyday use.Holga cameras may be fitted with a Polaroid back, allowing use of Polaroid 80 series instant film, or with newer models, 100 series film (but the image is not centered).

The clips holding the back on can work loose causing the back to fall off and it can have light leaks from different parts of the camera which can be blocked out with electrical tape. Meanwhile, the 120CFN has a colour flash, while the most alphabet-heavy Holga of them all – the 120GCFN – has a glass lens and a colour flash.This comprehensive review and guide is just me passing on the knowledge and experience the Littlest Holga brought to me. Images are extremely soft focus and dreamlike – any moving subject is rendered as a ghostly blur – and a nearly endless depth of field puts both the foreground and background in relative focus. The Holga 120N was first introduced around 2003 as an upgrade on the 120S, which was the original Holga from way back when it all began. The optical flaws revealed by shooting a full 6x6 Holga image became a desired effect for many photographers, who removed the 6×4. The plastic lens does not lend itself to faithful colour reproduction, but it does something magical to it.

I own two Holgas so the second one may not be exactly the same but I haven’t noticed it in the images.The slight softness of the images, vignetting and random light leaks produce dream-like, one-of-a kind images. It really is a blast to use, and it can help to recapture the fun informality that many of us start our photographic experiences with, before getting bogged down in MTF charts and optimum apertures. Fascination with the camera seemed to wane at the beginning of the 2010s, and almost as if on cue, the factory that manufactured Holgas closed its doors in late 2015, signaling the end of the Holga era. Due to a manufacturing oversight, this switch has no effect on pre-2009 production cameras, and the actual aperture is around f/13, giving the Holga just one aperture. Light leaks in a Holga usually originate from the red window, the two holes above the film gate, unwanted detachment of the back, or when removing a loosely-wound finished roll.