You learn from your mistakes

So the forth film through a Holga turns out to be my least successful yet.

 

I don’t know if the fact that the film was expired made a difference but the contrast was really high and most shots were underexposed. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to the light on the day I took these

2 secs bulb exposure - camera propped on a bridge hence movement blur

I also managed to once again wind over one exposure, but out of the eleven I did take only four look like intentional photographs to me, and even then not that good.

First attempt at a Holga splitter - fail!

Still, hopefully I will learn from my mistakes. I hope the other two expired Tri-X films I used come out better. I also used my home made Holga Splitter for the first time (on the photo of the trees). But this didn’t work out too good. I’ll have to try it again in better light.

1 sec bulb exposure - camera on a rock

Not strictly Holga

I once emailed Lensbaby to see if they had thought of doing a “Toycamera” or Holga type optic for their Lensbaby composer system. They had not, mainly because they think their plastic optic already has it covered. These shots are taken with the plastic optic and an Olympus E-620. Not very Holga like to me, but a fun lens nevertheless. 

Crazy Daisy - home made shaped aperture disk

Starbucks picture

Chair in local library

River Taff - well I am a "Taffy" afterall!

My back door

Glass tile

Glass wing

Salad for tea - again!

Autumn colour

 

My third film through the Holga GTLR is more colour Kodak 400VC. The next film to get developed is the less saturated Kodak 400NC film, I’ll be interested to compare the results. The saturated colours of the VC film suited the late autumn hues of a tree in a park local to me – one of the few trees with some leaves left.

Memorial to Capt Scott (of the Antarctic) who sailed from Cardiff

Can’t quite believe I made the rookie mistake of including my shadow in a photo (non-intentionally), but of course there’s no live view with a Holga, you just point it at what you want to photograph and shoot. Still, I should have spotted it! The other rookie mistake I made was falling asleep whilst inserting the film and winding past the first exposure – duh!

Who's the muppet casting a shadow in my photo?

I seemed REALLY close to this tree when I took the photo?

Another dual exposure (deliberate, I haven’t done an accidental one YET). I thought I had tried my home made Splitzer, but that must have been on the B&W film in my Holga 120N, yet  to be developed.  Some of these shots also feature the (£8 on EBAY) Holga wide angled lens attachment. You can see the greater vignette and corner distortion on the shots using the wide attachment.

Double exposure

The final two images are of my parents dog, (Caesar)  they wanted some pictures of him, so he got Holgered.

Hail Caesar

Noble, if somewhat dim beast.

Which brings me to the main drawback in Holga photography, the expense of developing and printing/scanning 120 film. The cheapest I can find is £10 for developing and scans, or developing and prints. Still with a “prosumer” DSLR costing £1000, you can afford a fair few films for that price.

Digital Holga?

The Yashica EZ F521

Digital Holga – really? No, not really, but to be fair to the company that bought the Yashica name, they never claimed it was. It's just a cheap 5MP digital compact with a plastic lens (hence the Holga comparison by some). It has some fun built in digital filters that can be applied before or after shooting – in camera. You can even stack several on top of each other. It has a strangely powerful flash and video capability.

Flashlit Graffiti

Another neat trick it does is bend images. There is no shutter, the camera scans the sensor from top to bottom, if you move the camera horizontally while taking a shot, it gets confused and bends vertical objects.

Bendyness

 

 

Colour filters

Like a Holga there is only simply focussing ability (normal or macro) but there is some exposure control, you can apply flash and exposure compensation settings through the menu options. One thing it does that real Holga photographers can only dream of, it can see what you about to take. It has a Holga like useless viewfinder or an LCD screen to where you can actually preview the image!  

Some owners have inserted a washer behind the lens to give Holga like vignette. I don’t see the point as I can easily add this in photo-editing software if I want to. But I suppose that if you don’t have the software it’s an interesting mod.

Strange red colour cast

B&W filter

Some digital vignette

If you want a digital camera that gives Holga images, sorry, you’ll have to wait. But if you want a fun featured – take anywhere – cheap digital, the Yashica is worth a punt.

Glorious Technicolour (Well kodak 400VC colour)

For the second roll of film through my new Holga GTLR I chose some Kodak 400VC. The Holgarama banner at the head of my blogs was shot with the end of this roll. I didn't see the cars on the left in the viewfinder - this demonstrates how difficult it can be framing shots on the Holga when you don't get to see exactly what the lens sees!

I started shooting it where my last blog was shot, at St Fagans Welsh folk museum, the last building I came to was a particularly colourful farm house that I thought would suit the Kodak film. All the buildings in the St Fagans museum have been brought brick by brick, from other parts of Wales and give an interesting insight into what life was like in Wales for previous generations.

I also chose this roll to investigate some double exposures. Some worked, some didn't. I think it is best to shoot the first exposure with few highlights, saving the second exposure for brighter areas like sky.













Next I tried some topiary - again framing wasn't quite right.



On this roll I also shot my first bulb exposure, trying to capture the movement in the water. I placed the camera on a rock and counted "one-one thousand".

For my next outing I will be trying this used 120N I picked up off EBAY. Also trying out the home-made Holga Splitzer I made from a Holga Lenscap.

The Holga bug bites

After ten years shooting just with a digital camera, getting obsessed with pixels, sharpness, detail, dynamic range, post processing, etc, I suddenly had a thought :- 

"why don't I get a cheap plastic Chinese 120 film camera
with a dodgy lens, prone to light leaks, distortion and vignetting?"

- The Holga bug bites!

These first images are poor quality scans of prints (I don't have a photo scanner) but then Holga images are fairy lo-fi to start with, so it's no problem.

These images are taken at the Welsh folk museum at St Fagans, just outside Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. The camera was a Holga GTLR loaded with Ilford HP5 film.

I really enjoyed not knowing what the camera was producing , years of digital shooting made me forget the excitement of waiting for the film to come back from the developers. The lack of exposure controls on the camera was a bit disconcerting, but the freedom of just pointing and shooting made photography fun in a new way.

Don't get me wrong, I still like digital. I'm glad I live at a time when we can shoot in both digital AND film - I don't see the point of the film/digital wars that flame on some forums?

But now the Holga bug has bitten me I must try some colour film . . . oh and a splitzer . . . what about infrared? . . . maybe the wide angle attachment . . . 35mm panoramic film with sprockets . . . double exposures . . . Holga montages. . . light leaks . . . a plastic lens Holga. I think I'm going to enjoy this.