The Holga is a cheap plastic film camera with a plastic lens that captures dreamy vintage images. I own both a 120 and 35mm Holga and I shoot with them extensively. Below is an image that I captured with my 35mm model.
I discovered that Holga also makes lenses for modern digital cameras, and I’ve recently acquired two of these: a Canon and a Micro Four Thirds mount version. Here’s the latter lens, mounted on my Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera.
Both lenses have plastic optics, simple zone focusing wheels and fixed apertures–they’re basically identical to the lenses found on Holga cameras. This combination of cheap optics and narrow apertures, plus some pretty heavy distortion and vignetting, creates digital images that look like they were captured on a consumer film camera in the 1960’s. Shooting video through them gets a similar result–the footage looks like Super 8 film!
Below are two recent test films that I shot with my Holga lenses. The first was shot on my Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, and the second on my Canon T2i with the addition of a Holga .5X Wide Angle Adapter. I really like the extra distortion this adapter adds.
I love the retro film aesthetic and I’ve shot projects on retro movie cameras before, but the price of motion picture film is a huge limitation. I’m so pleased to discover that I can get a similar look with a $20 lens on my digital camera, and I’m already planning projects based around this look. Stay tuned!