Holga 120CFN
Medium Format Fixed Focus Film Camera with Lens and Built-in Flash with Color Filter Wheel
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What’s a Holga?

A Holga is a cheap Chinese plastic medium format film camera. Essentially, a toy! Yes, I did say FILM camera! Why review this decidedly lo-tech dinosaur? Well, simply put, the Holga lets you express your creativity in ways that digital does not allow. Shoot a roll of color slide film and then have your photo processing people cross-process it as if it were negative film (For Kodak and similar films, that would be C-41 instead of the proper E-6). Check out my Holga shots here and see what you think!

Why would I want a Holga?
Three reasons: they’re cheap, fun, and outta control!

1. $25 new for the basic model, $40 with flash.

2. Their inherent poor design and limited operator control adds so much mystery to the picture-taking process that it nearly turns the user into an instant artist! To some people, this is fun.

3. Good film can give you much better color saturation and resolution than you can get with most under-$300 digital cameras! You can buy medium format (120mm) film at most camera stores and have it processed there as well.

Tell me more about the Holga

Holgas were first marketed in 1982 as a way for photography students and photo enthusiasts to enjoy inexpensive access into the expensive world of medium format photography. While you can improve the quality of your results with a film camera by using better film, you can further improve the quality of your results by using a larger format. With digital, you don’t have the first option. All you can do if you want better picture quality is go up in format size, from point-and-shoot, to DSLR, to medium format. Bearing in mind that the typical prices of these digital options are $150, $1000, and $25,000 respectively, good film in a cheap camera becomes a very attractive way to get extremely hi-res images!

So I’ll get $25,000 results with a $25 Holga?
Of course not. But check out the images in this book to get an idea of just what the Holga can do!

Why bother with film, when we have digital?

Holga cameras are simply quirky and fun, harkening back to the days of film when we couldn’t instantly see our result. Film lends an element of tentativeness, or mystery and waiting, to see if “the picture came out.” Holgas are so popular in fact that a company calledn Lensbabies markets $100+ lens attachments to make your digital camera produce distorted Holga-style images!

When considering a Holga camera, there are a few things to think about:
I’ve arrived at these points after having used two different Holgas (one with flash, the other without) for a few years now. In my opinion, these are the camera’s high and low points:

The Good

• Photos on a sunny beach look amazing.
• No batteries! This is a fully manual camera except for the flash, which needs a few AA batts.
• Simple controls—one shutter speed (about 1/100 second), flash activation, 2 aperture settings (in theory), B N switch (Bulb, which keeps shutter open as long as you hold the lever down; and Normal, which trips the spring-loaded shutter)
• For best results, shoot slow film (ISO 100) in bright sun, fast film (ISO 400) in the shade and indoors with flash.

The Bad

• The ridiculous carrying strap attached to the slider mechanism that holds the back on the camera. Try carrying it by the strap and (though it’s very light) the weight of the camera pulls the slider up, the camera drops to the ground and your film falls out! Talk about light leaks…But I guess that’s why they give you a roll of black vinyl electrical tape with the camera—to tape it shut. To avoid a sticky mess (like mine), a friend puts a heavy rubber band around her Holga, which keeps the back from popping off. Ingenious!
• The Sun/Shade switch, which presumably changes the aperture, does nothing. This is not my usual exaggeration—you can look inside the camera with the back removed—it does nothing!
• Most flash photos look less than stellar.
• If you forget to manually wind the film to the next frame, you can easily make a double exposure (for me, this is bad, for someone else, it may be good!)

Conclusion
Want a fully automated camera? Buy a digital point-and-shoot. Want a quirky cumbersome dinosaur of a camera that produces fun, amusing, and even thrilling distorted images? Then the Holga is for you!

Read more about the camera’s history here. If you’re digitally-bred and don’t know beans about film cameras, here’s a link to the operating instructions that come with the Holga 120.