Seen Dr Strangelove?… Maybe not..

Anyway… I was given a Holga 120 GCFN for Christmas and thought that its about time I tried to shoot a few things with it.

Yes, I accept the fact that Holgas have pretty much been done to death and they’re looked down upon by many. But I take photos for fun, and a Holga is a toy camera, so it seems pretty natural to give one a go at some point. I’ve seen some amazing photos produced by Holgas, so I’m looking forward to running a few rolls of film through mine.

Now, if you know anything about Holgas, you’ll know they don’t have the best build quality. That’s no big deal if you know this and accept it. But if you’re expecting a Holga to produce the same image quality as other medium format cameras on the market, you’ll be disappointed. What Holga’s do have though is an unpredictability factor. A “feature” that can give some amazing results. Lens flares, Light leaks, vignetting, double exposures, over/under exposures, soft focusing, all the norm with Holga’s.
“Err that sounds shit. Why would you want that? Just by some good L glass(Canon) and take photos of sunsets and macro insects with the rest of us”
As much as I like macro photos of fly heads, and sunset pictures of the Sydney harbour bridge, I want to try out being a Holga snob for a little bit.

Ok, now as much as all of those unique Holga “features” are good and everything, I want to get rid of some of them. The first thing I’ll be doing is some some flocking on my holga.

Holga Flocking :
Ok, the awesome cheap ass plastic that Holga uses is shiny as hell. This is pretty bad for the insides of a camera. You don’t want light flying around inside your camera as it can impact on the image “quality” from the Holga. By flocking your camera you can stop all this from happening and should increase the contrast of your photos.
How do I flock? Well, its pretty easy, and only takes a matter of minutes.

1. Get some matt black spray paint. Hardware stores and hobby shops are good for this, just make sure its matt not gloss, the whole idea is to stop light reflections.

2. Mask up your Holga. Cover the the shutter assembly, battery terminals, foam, etc with some sort of masking tape. The idea is to spray all the shiny plastic surfaces that aren’t really do anything. Also make sure you mask the red window on the film door so it doesn’t get sprayed.

3. Lay out newspaper in a well ventilated room. Optional.

4. Start spraying the plastic parts in long even strokes. Several light coats are better than one heavy coat. Make sure you spray into all the smaller tricky areas.

5. Allow to dry before assembling. It’ll be stupid if you start grabbing pieces that are still wet, unless you’re going for the rough fingerprint finish.

Your done! Your Holga is now Flocked. The masking takes about 10 times as long as the actual spraying. Just don’t rush anything, because if you do and make a mistake it’ll turn a 15 minutes job into a 1 hour job.

Below is a photo to illustrate the differences between the normal plastic and the flocked plastic. As you can see the difference is pretty noticeable.

Check out my sweet Typography…

And the whole lot:

 Average photos, but you get the idea.

It took about 15 minutes in total.
Now all that’s left is to take some photos. Oh, and to find a place that develops 120 film. I had a recent disaster with the place I’ve been using near my house, so I wont be going back there. Details to follow next time.