I bought a Holga camera - a $25 plastic camera from china with a plastic lens. It is a film-based medium format camera. It has only one aperture setting (probably somewhere around f/11 or f/13). It has only one shutter speed (probably around 1/60th second). The "focusing ring" has 4 settings: an icon of one dude, an icon of 3 dudes, an icon of a group of dudes, and and icon of a mountain.
I've loaded it with B&W ISO 400 film, which given all the constants above, is probably going to be best for early morning and late evening -- golden hour and twilight shots outside. Probably won't be good for indoor shots, unless it is a sunroom or a well lit museum or atrium or something like that.
I took one shot this morning. Amazing how film made me much more deliberate in thinking about composition and light and "worthiness" of the photo before I snapped the shutter release. Digital is cheap and immediate. Film is costly and timely. I wonder if it'll make me a better photographer?
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Holga 120N
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3 comments:
I'll be looking forward to the outcome of your dabbling in film. I've thought about getting a Holga or Lomo but haven't pulled the trigger yet (I really want that Lomo Fisheye cam).
I did put a roll of film through a cheap "kids" plastic film camera, with some partly interesting results, but the scans I got from Costco were lousy, so I haven't posted any. I need to get set up to scan my own negatives before I do much more film shooting.
Ha, the Canolga wasn't good enough eh? I still have my mamiya C330 and a couple of lenses if you want to borrow them and try your hand at slow and expensive photography :).
Ken -- I'm going to take you up on that offer! I'm looking for a way to 'calibrate' my developing process... It's hard to do with a camera that I really don't know if I am exposing correctly or not -- the Holga is just too random.
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