Those who have used a Holga know what a character it is; those who haven’t heard of it need to get one and try it out. The Holga is a gem. Medium format, 120 film. Completely plastic camera – plastic body, plastic lens. Operation is as simple as it gets – exposure is 1/100 or Bulb; focus distance is near, further away, quite far and really far. Aperture is Sunny or Cloudy (roughly f11 or f8). And the body will – as I found – fall open if you’re not careful. But it’s great fun, you’ll find photos all over Flickr and the usual places. I ran a couple of films through mine – Ilford XP2 and Portra 400 – just to see what it looked like. I got that typical Holga vignetting and I’m pretty sure I’ll be using it again. Oh, and it cost me less than $40 for the top of the range model with flash. Who says photography has to be expensive?
Chris McPhee - Photographer 