Holga Pinhole Cameras Part 1

In the last few posts I talked about returning to medium format black and white film. I made a homebrew pinhole “lens” from a camera cap and did not get what I wanted. I bought two Holga pinhole cameras, a Holga-120WPC wide angle model and a regular Holga 120 Pinhole. They both take, of course, 120 film. Here they are (shown with the lens caps off):

Holga 120 Pinhole

Holga 120WPC

Holga cameras are made in Hong Kong and have a big worldwide following, both the models with  lenses and without. The wide angle version is a monster, as you can see from the picture above. Since the cameras are built so cheaply, Holgas are notorious for leaking light. This is part of their appeal, a lot of photographers believe. It’s been said that no two Holgas are alike, which makes yours unique and supposedly endears you to it.

Loading the film is easy, and on the Holga 120 pinhole you have a choice of 12 or 16 exposures. Same with the 120WPC. The very first thing you need to do after loading the film is to PUT A PIECE OF TAPE UNDER (OR OVER ON THE 120WPC) THE METAL BACK HOLDERS. It’s ironic. I was just watching this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB4f0femgjE

and laughing at Kai when the back of his Holga kept falling off during his shoot. It’s raining outside today so I thought I would take a shot of the deck through a lower window. I picked up the tripod the Holga sat on to move into position and guess what- the back fell off. I was on the ninth exposure and thought I had a couple good shots. I’ll develop the negatives but I don’t have much hope. Again, tape the back holders so the back doesn’t fall off. It’s only a matter of time until it happens to you.

Holgas are cheap. The basic Holga 144-120N goes for $29.99 on B&H’s website, the 120 Pinhole goes on Amazon for 32.92 and the 120WPC is $49.95. If you plan on using the pinhole versions you will need to use a cable release and tripod. The cable release for the 120 Pinhole is a mechanical contraption that fits over the lens (you can see it on the photo of the 120 Pinhole. The thread size on the cable release is non-standard and does not fit my Canons or Yashica Mat124-G.

I’m going to start shooting with the Holgas today and will soon develop the negatives. I’ll have more about these quirky cameras in later posts. You can check out the whole line of Holga cameras here: http://shop.holgadirect.com

Pinhole Photography

I’ve always admired pinhole photography. I converted a camera cap by drilling a hole in it then cutting out a piece of metal from a pop can, poking a hole in it with a pin and taping it to the camera cap with black electrical tape. Here’s a good tutorial how to do just that:

http://www.howtogeek.com/161794/how-to-take-pinhole-photos-with-a-digital-camera/

Here’s some results with a couple of different hole diameters. The first shot is with a large pinhole and the second with a smaller pinhole.

Big Hole

Little Hole

  

The first thing I noticed was every spec of dust on the sensor, no matter how minute, showed up as a big black spot in the resulting image. This required a lot of work to clean up in Lightroom. I set the camera (Canon 30D) on a tripod and, after each exposure, checked out the histogram. That’s the only way to tell if you’ll get a reasonably exposed shot.

The images were not what I expected or wanted. So, what to do? I read about Holga pinhole cameras. They are made entirely of plastic, leak light and have a big cult following. I bought two of them- the standard pinhole and the panoramic version (Holga-120WPC). Holga’s are essentially toy cameras that are made in China to bring photography to the masses. They use 120 film, which is my preferred film size. I’ll be using Tri-X like in the Yashica Mat 124-G. I’m expecting the cameras any day now and will continue posting after they arrive.