#holgaphotography

@jaimeblancarte

Colección del autor

So why in 2020 would anyone consider using a film-based pinhole camera?

To be honest, there is no real logical answer to that. After all, there has been a race going on in the digital camera world; with higher and higher numbers of millions of pixels in resolution, increased colour depth, and huge amounts of dynamic range dominating system specs.

Add to that, the ever-increasing quality of lens technology, that allows sharper focus with superb micro-contrast...then why consider a camera that doesn’t even have a lens?

The Holga 120 WPC is a completely plastic camera. When you pick it up, it is light...very, very light. It feels like it won’t take much punishment before it would fall apart.

Where the lens would be on a ‘proper’ camera, there is a small pinhole that has an f-stop of 135.

To the left of the ‘lens’ as you look at the front of the camera, is the shutter release. Being totally honest, it doesn’t give much feedback or confidence when pressing it.

Attaching a cable release is almost mandatory...but again, there isn’t the feedback of a click when taking the photo...of course there isn’t, because there isn’t really a shutter - just a piece of plastic on a spring that you move out of the way.

One of the things that you will have to consider when taking a photo, is that, the lack of weight in the camera means that you can easily move it when pressing the ‘shutter release’ - potentially adding some motion blur to what will already be a fuzzy image.

You will almost certainly need a tripod as well, the one piece of metal on this camera is the tripod screw on the underside.

Users report that Holga cameras are notorious for allowing light leaks around the seams of the component parts of the camera. My version doesn’t appear to have this issue...yet. But gaffer tape has always been one of the things that pro-photographers have in their camera bags when out on assignment, so no real problems when that does happen.

I’ve not even addressed the elephants in the room (yes there is more than one) - the inconvenience of developing 120 medium format film, the time involved along with the costs of purchasing each film and processing it.

Add to the above that the hole in the front of the camera allows dust and moisture inside and onto the film; that you have to work at levelling the camera to get the horizon straight; the winding mechanism isn’t the best; trying to frame your picture is a rather hit and miss affair; there is vignetting; you can get what appears to be parts of the camera on the image; and the fact that you only really get five panoramic images on each standard 120 film reel...why, oh why would anyone want to use this camera?