18.8.09

Holga

This little plastic toy camera is so fun to use. It is very lightweight and environmental friendly, because it is fully mechanical- which means it never ever run out of battery since it has none. This little thing is so light that I'm not scared of dropping it on the floor or banging it onto something but since this camera is not mine, I was pretty cautious when using it.

Last weekend I met with my sisters who are working in Singapore. My second sister bought this lomo film camera with her boyfriend for fun, and the sample shown here is of her boyfriend's. This is Holga 135BC which uses 35mm format film instead of Holga's native medium format film. Thus it is no surprise that Holga's hallmark vignetting is not so pronounced in this model.

The fact that it is a fully mechanical camera means that it's a fun to use. Ever tried of loading a roll of film yourself? Scrolling forward to the next frame after every single shot? Rewinding the film and taking out the film canister? Well, you can experience all these with this Holga.

This Holga is super inexpensive, too: It only cost around 150 S$ for this Holga 135BC + Fisheye Lens + Flash. That's even less than 10% of my D90!

Now let's have a look at this little Holga lomo camera:

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Holga.

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See the small switch up there? It indicates "sunny" and "cloudy"- meaning aperture of f/11 and f/8.DSC_6579-1 (Medium)

This funny scale is the focus scale: head shot- family- bowling pins- Everest.

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Behold! It even has an option to shoot in bulb mode! "B" stands for "bulb" and "N" stands for "normal" which the shutter speed is 1/100 sec. Also note the tripod socket below the switch.

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Flash hot-shoe, shutter button, frame count, and... see the wheel down there? It's used to advance the film after every single shot. If you forget to do so you can get artistic multiple exposures too!

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The plastic meniscus lens. 60mm in native medium format, 47mm here in 135BC. Maximum aperture of f/8.

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The fisheye lens- just stack on top of the plastic lens and you'll have this effect:

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Just that the distortion isn't very strong.

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The external flashgun which fires at full power every single time. Colour gels included too!

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Some long forgotten exposure table.

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All the accessories- which adds up costing even less than your glass.

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Nice toy to play with.

And now this camera is on my wishlist. Medium format!

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