another post of a Holga flavour…

It’s been a couple of years since my original medium format film Holga died but last year I spent the princely sum of around £10 on a plastic holga lens with a micro-4/3 mount. A genius bit of kit. It’s not quite the same as using an original film Holga as it lacks the light leaks and wind-on errors that made original Holga images so much fun in a lucky dip kind of way.. but the lens itself is genuine Holga and comes with all the same desirable attributes – distortion, softness, vignetting and so on. I decided last night that a number of the Holga images I have might be considered interesting enough to go in a dedicated gallery in my portfolio… so that’s what I did. Some of the original Holga images are in there (and a couple of sneaky Lomo pictures too) but most are more recent efforts using the Holga lens on a digital body. My favourites mostly come from last summer on the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides.. a particularly special place and relevant also in that I’m really excited to be returning there in a couple of months time. I figure there’s no harm in reproducing those favourites below as I have quite a number of new readers. If you’re sufficiently interested in seeing the whole collection it’s a menu selection in my portfolio here, I’ve also modified the code so now it opens the most recently updated gallery by default.

a September evening on the beach
late afternoon on Barra
view from Barra over Sandray to cloud-shrouded Mingulay in the far distance
the airport beach
Castlebay, approaching storm
rainbow...
stormy late afternoon on Barra
bird in the storm

7 thoughts on “another post of a Holga flavour…

  • Its interesting how a lack of quality can create mood yet we all still spend thousands of pounds on the best lens’ & more megapixels, myself included.

    Some nice pics there Mike :)

    • hilarious isn’t it, over the years some of the most fun times I’ve had with a camera have been with $20 toy cameras. With respect to the Holga lens, now wouldn’t it be ironic if it was available in a Leica M-mount.. :-)

    • not an Agfa but not a million miles from that back in the 90’s I had a Voigtlander (the original, not the current japanese back brand) Bessa 1 folding MF rangefinder to play with. I swapped it for a Fuji GW670 rangefinder.. subsequently sold. I did recently (well 2009) have a chance to wrtite a test report for the current Voigtlander Bessa III folder, really liked that camera, would still like one but can’t afford it.

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