I finally took my Holga 120 TLR out for a test drive this weekend and shot my first roll of 120 film. It was pretty strange jumping from the digital convenience of the Canon 5D with beautiful glass to the limitations of a toy film camera with a plastic lens. It’s not just the fact that the camera lacks an accurate view finder, but after taking a picture, there’s this strange silence. This is the moment I often check the histogram of the image on the back of my Canon to make sure I exposed correctly… but of course, this moment doesn’t happen with the Holga. I’m left wondering whether I even took a picture at all.

I modified my Holga before shooting (see previous post). I think the modifications helped. The photos were fuzzy around the edges. A few of the pictures had some pretty cool light leaks. My roll of Kodak 400vc film limited me to just 12 square formated shots. I experimented a little with some in-camera double exposures which is a technique I’ve also had a lot fun with digitally (see ~ The Laughing Skull and The Double Monalisa ~ as well as ~ Zot! [in camera double exposure] ~).

Shooting film for the first time since I was a teenager made me feel kind of like a blind man. It was definitely a thrill taking my camera to the lab and waiting patiently for processing and scans of my negatives to be completed. It was a complete mystery to me how they would turn out. I already knew that the Holga would in some way push my subjects through it’s plastic into some strange toy camera world. What I didn’t know was whether or not I would like any of what it ended up outputting. When I finally got home and brought the digital scans up on my computer screen, I was pleased to find a few shots that I actually thought were pretty cool.