Charlie's Worldfirst films
so, as you know, I’m on the quest for photographic enlightenment and that involves a forray back into the world of film. Starting with the basics – a Holga medium format toy camera and (still to arrive – Monday hopefully) Olympus Trip 35
As I said in the previous post, the first of the Holga films came back and they are wicked!
Holden EH
Freeway
Steps
Anja
The only problem is the cost – $100 to post, develop and return 5 films. *eep*
Looks like I’ll be venturing into the world of home developing a little earlier than I had anticipated..
Charlie's World 
Excellent results you got there – I opted for the newer 35mm format Holga (135 bc) and the irony is that they seemed to have improved their quality control – for example there are no discernible light leaks whatever and the vignetting is much weaker than you are getting in your examples. lol
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hey 🙂 thanks for dropping by and thank you for the compliment! yeah, I was expecting mine to be light leaky and in need of tape (in fact, I bought some black gaffer tape in anticipation) but despite the back being somewhat clunky, it seems light tight. The lens on the other hand is wonky as hell and gives the most marvellous distortions! Vignetting is only present on the smaller aperture setting, but its very obvious and even, which is nice, I have seem some that cover 1/2 the frame and I don’t think I’d like that so much. send me a link to your stuff if you have one – be interesting to see what the 35mm is like 🙂
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Yes it must be down to the lens you have the medium format holga’s seem to have the best of it when it comes to ‘wonkiness’ lol
You are lucky that the rest of the camera holds together so well – a ladyfriend of mine in Australia also bought the 120mm version but she DID need the gaffer tape from day 1!! lol
I have quite a few of my holga 35mm pics in flickr now and here is the link http://www.flickr.com/photos/lenfirewood/tags/holga/ – please be aware that that page includes holga pics that I have also worked on using fake TTV layers on some and GIMP effects on others but where I have done this I have noted in the images description.
Anyway thanks for your informative reply and I hope you do more as the results you are getting are quite fascinating 🙂
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Hey Len – thats cool – really like your pics – there’s still plenty of that “Holga-ness” to them, though they’re pretty clean and accurate compared to mine. Perhaps the MF Holga’s are, as you say, more wonky?
One observation, your pics seem a little under exposed (although it could be my laptop?) – what films are you using? The reason I ask is that I went to see an exhibition by a Holga genius, Kevin Ballantine and after a long chat he suggested a minimum of 400ISO to let as much light in as possible. Either that or ask the lab to push the film a stop or two. Its (usually) very bright here in Perth, so the Velvia 100 I’ve been using has largely been ok, but there’s been days (like today) when its overcast and way to dark for the films speed. Like you though, I love the unpredictable way the shots come out – so much, if slightly expensive, fun :))
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That’s a really good tip Charlie (about using higher speed films) _ I have been using 100 and 200 iso max so far because that is what I use with my other 35mm cameras. I generally don’t like to go above 200 iso but since this is HOLGA photography the extra grainyness might help offset the otherwise lack of ‘wonkiness’ in this particular build of camera. I should have cottoned onto this earlier and the 400 iso film is actually a little cheaper to get hold of if I remember right! lol 🙂
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