Playing Around With a Holga

He’s lightweight and full of fun

Although I’m deeply in love with my Hasselblad, I’m open to changing it up once in a while and trying something new. So when my son received a Holga as a gift and I saw the images he created I asked if I could borrow it for a test run.

Thankfully, he agreed.

The differences between my Hassey and his Holga are vast. They’re complete opposites really. Mr. Hassey is serious. Heafty. He makes me slow down and take my time. He requires a light meter to set each exposure. Precision is the name of the game with him.

But Mr. Holga? I can’t quite take this guy seriously. He’s lightweight and built of plastic. Heck, I think the lens is even plastic. He has four vague options for focusing and two settings for exposure — cloudy and sunny. He feels more like a toy in my hands. He makes me want to play.

And since he’s far more portable than my Hasselblad, I decided to take my test run with him on a trip up to my sister’s cabin.

Like my Hassy this guy is old school and when we reached the cabin I loaded in a roll of black and white film. Then I paused. I realized had no idea exactly what the hell to do with him. I’d watched a YouTube video before heading up to the cabin to get the gist of loading film and focusing but by the time I arrived I’d forgotten a few things and unfortunately, the cabin had no wifi.

I couldn’t quite remember what distances correlated to the icons on the focus ring. I’d seen a cheat sheet for approximate distances for each icon and I couldn’t remember exactly what they were.

So I had to go by instinct. I was playing around, after all.

Looking through the tiny square window to frame each shot took me back to my youth and my first camera — a Kodak Instamatic. Like that one, I wasn’t peering through the lens to know for sure what would be included in each image. What I captured would be slightly off from what I saw through the square.

I shrugged my shoulders. My photos might be a crap shoot but I was determined to have fun with this test drive. The only way to learn his quirks was to jump in.

So I started snapping.

I knew from my son’s photos that the edges of the images would appear blurry. The camera does best with dead-center subjects. I often don’t frame images that way and didn’t think about that when I took the above photo. Luckily the circle of focus is wide enough so that the tipped-over canoe sat within that range.

Black and white images always lend themselves well to shots depicting lines, shapes, and textures. I walked the path down to the lake to see what I might find to capture one of those three elements of design.

I then worked my way to the dock and peeked over the edge. A pattern of aquatic plants floating on calm water caught my eye. I had no idea how Mr. Holga would read water and this scene — but I was playing right?

I had to try one.

Next, I headed to a wooded area full of birch trees and quaking aspens — two of my favorite trees. If you’ve ever seen them you’ll know that on a sunny day, their white bark just glows. I’ve never been able to capture that glow in color images and knew it probably wouldn’t happen with black and white so I shifted to capturing lines and textures.

I reached the end of the roll quicker than I’d ever done with my Hassy. With my test drive completed, I wound up the roll. I dropped it off at a local photo store when I returned home and learned there’s only one guy they use who hand-processes all the rolls they receive. He was backed up and it might take 3–4 weeks.

Yep. 3–4 WEEKS.

When the call came in that my order was finally ready I gingerly asked if the roll contained any viable images. The guy exclaimed, “Well they scanned it so it must have something!”

Thank goodness.

The roll held a few out-of-focus shots but surprisingly many weren’t. Now I know a bit more about the range of the focus ring. I also learned how much latitude film must have. The settings were so limited yet with just a few tweaks in Lightroom the images turned out okay.

I may just take him out again soon for another spin.

kasey sparks, © 2023

Thank you for reading. To quote Ram Dass, “We’re all just walking each other home.” If you’d like to join me on the journey, click here.