Holga: an adventure in lo-fi photography

I got my film back from Dwayne's Photo yesterday and started the long process of sorting, editing, resizing and collaging. I decided my first film post should be a few of my Holga images because other than resizing, I don't edit them. I don't care if they're flat or cropped weird or blurry- they're Holga! For those of you who don't know- Holgas are lo-fi, toy cameras that originated in Hong Kong in the 1980's. They are known for their single piece plastic lens, soft focus, natural vignetting and light leaks. You can shoot 6x6 or 6x4.5 format and though the Holga is made for 120 (medium format) film, with a few minor adjustments you can rig them to accept 35mm too. The shutter speed is 1/100th of a second and the aperture is controlled by setting the camera to the picture of a cloud (f/8) or the picture of a sun (f/11). I was a little nervous to take the Holga as one of my main cameras because I'd never used the one that I currently have and had no idea how it would shoot but I was happy with the way these turned out. There is a fine line between cool and terrible with Holga. A little light leak and it's so cool! A giant light leak and it's terrible! Luckily, I ended up with a little light leak and accurate focusing distances and a few cool images. Check them out...

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Water tower, somewhere in Utah

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Valley of Fire+ Red Rock Canyonn

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Billboard, middle of nowhere, Utah

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HeyMatthew + Staircase at Valley of Fire

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If you aren't familiar with Holgas you can read more about them HERE and once you fall in love, you can head on over to the Lomo store and buy one HERE. A few other other toy cameras to check out are the Diana, the LC-A (not a fan), the Lubitel and the new La Sardina. Also, be sure and check out Light Leaks, one of my favorite low-fi photo magazines!!!! They have tons of Holga images and sell pdf versions of the mag for only $5! What a deal!