I haven’t used the Holga much because I haven’t been able to scan the 6×6 negs until now and paying Snappy Snaps £9.00 or whatever to scan each roll from a £15.00 camera seemed a little too much to pay for dubious art photos. But now I can scan 120 roll film I will!
So today I developed my first 120 film ta da!!!! HP5+ 120 that has been hanging around waiting for this moment.
I think the dev went OK, tis hard to tell with Holga images. I was a bit apprehensive about loading the 120 stainless reel but once done I felt it was easier than a 35mm reel, doh. There is a lot less film for a start and the reels themsleves feel huge and sturdy after 35mm (using Kinderman reels off ebay for a song). The backing paper was no problem either, I thought it might get in the way.
I enjoy photographing with the Holga. For those that don’t know, this is a low tech plastic (toy) camera with a fixed really low quality plastic lens. It has very few controls – sun/shade and far/near. Excellent, I hear you say, keep it simple! However, the viewfinder is worse than useless and not worth looking through since it rarely points in the direction of the lens. Light leaks in the back and various other places, and there are a whole lot of other things ‘wrong’ with it. It was originally Soviet mass-produced but after ‘the fall of Communism’ the plant relocated to China from where mine was imported to Holgamods in the USA, where it was modded and sent to me in London for the princely sum of $25.00 (and the $ exchange rate at the time was $2 to the £) … pause for breath.
So why use such a crock of shit? Because it is fun primarily, but unusually it takes 120 roll film (12 6×6 or 18 6×4). Staggering! And I really like the square format and I have no other medium format camera (yet) so it gives me a chance to practice developing medium format roll film. But mainly it is fun and the results are random and it is hard to imagine something more different than the Leica. My Holga is held shut with velcro and people don’t take you very seriously when they see it, which is cool.
The most important trick is to remember to take the lens cap off… The other is to realise that focus, exposure, composition etc is something you have little contol over. Totally refreshing and leaves the way open to ‘creative’ photography lol.
This double exposure was taken with one shot of the steps going up and one of them going down.
The shot below needs to be seen as large as possible. It is a floating City of London
Then we get a bit more mundane with my fave lamposts
I don’t know if it is the HP5+. the Rodinal, the lense, the shape of the photos or the conbination of all or some but one of the characteristics of my Holga (and another great thing is that they are all different due to their random defects) is that there is an ‘aged’ look to some of these photos.
Finally a couple of straight shots in Deptford
The HP5+ 120 was developed in Rodinal 1+50 for 11 minutes, 20 seconds initial agitation, 2 gentle inversions every 30 seconds.
by skinnyvoice
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