Shikihan made this insane 6×17 "Limousine" pinhole camera out of a Holga! You can see two test shots made with it in Tokyo here and here on Flickr.
She’s made a bunch of other cool pinhole cameras (and makes great photos with them), check them out!
Ever wonder what happens when you line a Holga with aluminum foil? Me too!
I crinkled the crap out of it to hopefully get lots of light bouncing around in different directions, and lined the camera, shiny side out. The irregular vignette is because I wasn’t very careful about leaving the edges of the light path clear.
I expected the lowered contrast, but was thinking I might get some random specular-type highlights. Nope. Of the whole roll, this is the only frame that had a visible artifact (the white wavy form near the top). But this does show that you can easily control the shape of your vignette, just take the back off and put some crap around the square hole you can see the shutter through.
If you care, this is Kodak T-Max 100 developed in Diafine.
There is a fairly common shutter issue with Holga toy cameras that creates a slight double exposure in the bottom right corner of the frame (see above).
See what causes it and find out how to fix it at Squarefrog’s excellent Holga resource site, Holgas Online.
Chris Keeney talks to pinhole/Holga/Polaroid experimental photographer Therese Brown as part of his excellent ongoing series of interviews with fine art photographers.
You can see Brown’s work at her Web site, ThisIsWhatISee.com as well as on Flickr.
This one’s a must-read, so do it at ChrisKeeney.com.
Squarefrog, who over the last year has put together what is far and away the most comprehensive Holga information site going, is having a one year anniversary contest. All you have to do to enter is fill out a very short questionnaire. The contest is open to everyone world-wide.
Prizes and stuff:
First prize - Lomography Holga 120CFN package
Second prize - Holgon Strobe Flash
Third prize - 5 rolls of Agfa RSX II 200 ISO slide filmAll you need to do to be in with a chance of winning is to fill in the following form and click submit. The competition closes on Sunday October 7th 2007. Winners will be notified by email the following week. The information you submit is purely for my own interest, I would never pass on any of it to anyone!
I know Squarefrog online, and when he says he won’t give out your information, I believe him.
Sean Rohde gives us the run-down on the new 35mm Holga 135BC in two parts:
Photographic results and analysis (loads of pictures!)
The camera isn’t generally available yet, but eBay user uranium99 has them for US $49.99 + $19.99 shipping (to the US) from Hong Kong.
Therese Brown, whose Holga, pinhole, and Polaroid work I’ve been following on Flickr for the last two years or so, has just launched a web site of her photography as well as a blog.
Check it out at thisiswhatisee.com!
Check out this interview with Robert Holmgren by Chris Keeney.
You can see Holmgren’s work at his Web site, robertholmgren.com.
Squarefrog, who has put together what I believe to now be the definitive Holga resource site, has done a focus test to see if the generally cites distances for each focussing icon are correct.
He writes:
I decided to dispell some Holga focus myths and actually test the focus distance for the 3 people, and 7 people (group) settings. My camera was put on a tripod and the focus fixed in the middle of each setting. Then I moved the tripod back 2 ft after each picture. All pictures were taken using the cloudy setting with the aperture mod, so the aperture was about f/10…
See the results in a photo set on Flickr.
The exposure math of the Holga has always been a mystery to me, because it seems to violate the reliable Sunny 16 Rule. The rule basically states that if you set your shutter speed to the ISO of your film and the aperture to f/16, you’ll get a solid exposure in direct sunlight. (For example, if you had ISO 50 film, you’d set your shutter speed to the nearest number, likely 1/60.)
Admittedly, every Holga is a bit different, but I did have one of my Holgas tested with a shutter speed tester, and it came in at a fairly reliable 1/100 sec, which is what it’s supposed to be. As I found out while I measured for The facts about Holga apertures, a stock Holga has an aperture of f/13.3, regardless of the position of the sunny/cloudy switch. So with aperture of roughly f/13 and a shutter speed of 1/100, you should be able to shoot ISO 100 film in bright sunlight and have a proper exposure. (Technically about a half stop over as we’re at f/13.3 instead of 16, but that’s well within the exposure latitude of modern print films, so you should just get a little extra shadow detail).
So why the hell do I have to shoot ISO 200 or 400 film in bright sunlight to get a decent exposure, while I get underexposed mud with ISO 100, which should work perfectly? After thinking about it for a while, I strongly suspected that the plastic "Optical Lens" must have a good deal of transmission loss and was blocking two stops of light, so I set up a test: I pointed a Canon 580EX flash fitted with a Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce diffuser straight into a Holga with a Sekonic L-558R meter (which is extremely accurate and consistent) stuck in the back. I metered the flash through the camera five times with and five times without the lens in place and was fucking shocked by what I discovered: there was effectively no transmission loss. The readings averaged out to differ by only about 1/6 of a stop.
WTF??!? It’s not the lens. It’s not the aperture. It’s probably not the shutter: while I can allow for the possibility that the speed changes over time—it was over a year ago I had it tested—I consistently have the same exposure requirements with all of the 8-ish Holgas I have. What’s left? Light-eating gnomes?
