My Holga experiment started as a temporary solution. The camera I’d used since 2001, a twin-lens Yashica-Mat, needs to be repaired and while it’s in the shop getting re-conditioned, I decided to get a Holga to tide me over. I wanted something that would shoot 2 1/4 film and didn’t necessitate a small business loan, something cheap.
The Holga is indeed cheap. Plastic body, plastic lens, plastic shutter, plastic cheap. It has 2 shutter speeds; something like 1/100th of a second and bulb. It has 2 f/stops, sunny and overcast, though a defect in manufacturing rendered sunny the same as overcast, so really it has just one aperture, f/13ish. To advance the film after you make an exposure you have to manually wind the roll, using a window in the back of the camera to see the frame number, or you can skip the film advance and shoot multiple exposures to your heart’s content. This camera is as lo-fi as it gets, but what do you expect for 22 bucks and change?
Because it’s so cheap, the camera has spawned a multitude of modifications from Polaroid backs to custom lenses including pinhole adaptations. There’s more info at Holga Mods. You could say there’s a cult following behind the Holga. Due to the lax quality control in Hong Kong where they’re made, each camera produces slightly different results due to the inherent flaws of each camera.
Light leaks, focusing and exposure issues and the infamous vignette have turned this cheap little camera into an icon in the world of photography. No bells and no whistles, almost point and shoot in its simplicity, but enough control to allow a photographer to use what they know about the craft.
I know enough to understand photography isn’t about the camera, it’s about the photographer and the Holga, even though it has its quirks, just gets out of the way. It almost asks you to take pictures. So this little temporary solution might last a bit longer than I originally thought. At least until I break it, and maybe by then I’ll have the Yashica-Mat fixed.
