Monday 16 July 2012

Picture This - Hold on to your Holga



Unanderra Hardware ManPlastic deer headCOFA corridorSnow domes and Punky Brewster


More than five years ago I bought a Holga camera. The Holga, as some of you will already know, is a low cost, plastic 'toy' camera which takes 120 film. It is known for its sometimes blurry images, vignetting and light leaks. Almost straight away I bought some black and white film and loaded the camera ready to shoot a test roll as I wanted to see whether my camera had any of these light leaks or other quirks. I slowly took photos, some using the built-in flash and some without... not paying much attention to composition or subject as it was 'just a test roll' and then I put the film in the fridge... and... over five years later I finally got the film processed!  It's still quite exciting waiting to find out what is on the film but five years is certainly much too long to wait. I don't have an excuse. It just didn't get done sooner.


I didn't get the lab to scan the negatives as I wasn't sure if there would be anything worth scanning and I didn't want to spend the money unnecessarily. I don't have a negative scanner capable of scanning in 120 sized frames (yet... I've added it to my wish list) so after searching around the net a bit I found someone's DIY method which consists of putting the negs between some glass and placing this in front of a computer screen displaying a blank Word document then photographing the negative and inverting it using Photoshop. (Here is another method using a piece of glass with light behind it.) The results I got aren't perfect as I was rushing to try to photograph them during my toddler's nap time but hey, they've made me want to get some more film (maybe colour this time) and shoot with it again. That said, I am finally getting a new phone in a week or so and I am also looking forward to joining the Instagram crowd. There is room for both analogue and digital in my life.

Georgia


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