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?"
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.
