Fun with plastic cameras: I took a Holga for a spin here in Dundee, hoping for a bit of experimental fun.
A friend who’s a film photography buff — “never mind this digital photography fad” — advised me to load it with Ilford XP-2, a black and white film processed using C-41 (colour) chemistry that I often used back in my film days since it was so easy to get processed, compared to actual monochrome film. In this case, the big upside was exposure latitude, which with a Holga is something you can never get enough of, given the fixed (approximately) 1/125 shutter speed, and the choice of just two apertures, which in theory are ƒ/8 (cloud symbol) and ƒ/11 (sunny symbol).
Aiming to influence the chance of success more in my direction, I waited for a more overcast day to photograph. I also used an external light meter to make sure I was getting exposures close to what I would have wanted, even though I had little control, compared to if I’d been using a “normal” camera with more than two aperture settings, and an adjustable shutter speed.
Just for clarity, this was a medium format Holga 120 GCFN with a built-in 60mm glass lens, versus the plastic lens that features in many models. I wanted to see if that made a difference.
Some things haven’t changed: As is essential whenever using a Holga, I sealed up the camera with gaffer tape to try and reduce light leaks, and created a moveable flap over the film counter checking window, which has a piece of red plastic but leaves the underlying film at risk of fogging. The foam inside my Holga, to keep the film spools (feeder and take-up) in place, seemed very intact, so I let it be, but I did fold up a bit of the film box top to put under the feed spool to eliminate play.
To increase contrast, especially for the sky, I used a red filter over the lens. Also I set it to shoot 6cm square negatives, giving me 12 shots, instead of the 4.5x6cm format, which gives you 16. Because I was shooting monochrome, I used a red filter over the lens, to add contrast, especially to punch up skies.
Short takeaway: This was enjoyable; can’t wait to do more.
Bigger picture question: Has the Holga ship sailed? I enjoyed using it “back in the day” — circa 2000. What I didn’t enjoy were the seriously unpredictable results, even if I knew I was in the ballpark, exposure-wise. What biased things in my favour, for indoor photography at least, was using an external flash, which I could set to the aperture I wanted.
Holga arguably became “old hat” once smartphones came along that could emulate the look, with just an app and a snap. Hipstamatic comes immediately to mind for me. I still have it on my smartphone, though use it very little, preferring Snapseed and the control that provides. Josh Solomon makes great points in a blog post he wrote on the topic:
But what may be the Holga’s greatest flaw is that its unique look has, in 2017, become anything but unique. Through a combination of Holga-inspired Instagram filters and the widespread popularity of the Holga itself, the Holga look has been pasted so indiscriminately onto everything in the past couple of decades that the look has lost any meaning it once had. What was once profoundly surreal in the Holga has, through over-saturation, become nothing more than a cliché.
Even so, as he also noted, a great Holga photograph can deliver fun surprises, through a combination of “the most perfect storm of bad design and accidental ingenuity in photography.”
What drove me to pick up the Holga again was, in part, an article in issue no. 292 of Black+White Photography Magazine, published here in the U.K. by GMC Publications, which featured a portfolio of moody-looking landscape photographs in Scotland by Jean-Luc Koenig. I liked the idea of that, and I have always loved square photos, as they lend themselves to a different type of composition and geometry.
