Holga 120GN – tim dobbs photography

Since my lovely experience shooting the Littlest Holga for over a month a while back and producing a zine which was well received by my film photography peers I wanted to start shooting more Lomo style images alongside my other photography.

I already have a Diana F+ (which may feature in my 1st blog of 2019) … a Lomo Actionsampler and a Holga 120GN.

Since owning my Holga I have shot numerous rolls of B&W/C41 and Slide with very little to show in the way of usable images.

I always thought it was possibly my incompetence with the camera but after using another holga and getting loads of images that I was extremely pleased with I came to the conclusion that it was something not right with my copy.

The main problems were horizontal film scratches, huge light leaks that obliterated large areas of the image and ultra soft focus or even totally blurry images.

I realised that my Holga didn’t come with any film masks as I bought it 2nd hand from eBay so my 1st mod was to make my own mask which I guessed the size of by measuring the mask in my Diana and attached it to the inside using black tape.

I then replaced the foam on the take up side as it was perished and I did notice that I was previously getting fat rolls.

And lastly I attached similar foam pieces on the back door in the hope of keeping the film flatter and hopefully getting a bit better focus on the frames.

I loaded up a roll of my Favourite film ilford HP5+ which as the weather was really dull, overcast and drizzle I took a meter reading with my Sekonic meter and decided to rated the film at 800 iso and developed it in Rodinal at 1+25 dilution for 8 minutes with the intention of getting the best sharpness from the film.

Once scanning the film I was so pleased to find the images were such a vast improvement over any previous images that I have ever got from this camera and I was justified for playing around with the insides.

Ok … these are not a patch on what I get with a camera like my Fuji GW690iii but that is not what it is all about … these images are exactly what I want from my Holga and I am looking forward to shooting it on a more regular basis in the new year along with my other Lomo style cameras (I have already purchased a Lomo Fisheye).

Anyway here are some of the images ….

Please click a photo to view larger

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

I have a few older film cameras that sort of give the Lomo effect which I sometimes like the look of but I wanted to get a proper Lomo camera so managed to pick up this Holga 120gn off ebay for just £6.

I wasn’t really expecting much when I opened the parcel but it was still a slight shock to feel how cheap the camera was. Nevertheless I proceeded to load her up with a roll of Ilford Delta 400 only to find out it did not have the film masks so I was only able to shoot 6×6 but that was ok.12 extremely quick frames later and into the darkroom I went wondering if anything was going to appear on the film. It felt a little strange shooting every frame at 1/100sec @f11 as that was the only setting when sunny but every frame came out albeit slightly up and down in exposure but nothing that could not be tweaked while scanning the negs.

Here are the 12 shots in all their glory….lol

ps. the double exposure portrait of me was shot by Ben, a happy accident which is one of the reasons to shoot this Lomo style 🙂 click on an image to view larger……….