A few weeks ago I photographed Weston-super-Mare Grand Pier as it was destroyed by fire. At the time I fired off a roll of Fuji Provia 400 film through my Holga to see what I results I might get and how these would differ from my D200 shots.

This turns out to have been a perfect example of almost everything it is possible to get wrong with a Holga, so what better way to deal with my failure than by putting it on the internet for all to see?

Error 1.) Leaving the camera in “bulb” mode and over exposing the first two frames. oops.

Error 2.) Trying to do a panoramic with a Holga but not advancing the film enough or moving the camera enough. oops.

Error 3.) Not securing the back of the camera allowing it to open and expose the film and ruin it. oops

Error 4.) Assuming the whole film was ruined when in fact I only needed to advance it 2 frames and could easily have used the rest. oops.

The only thing I didn’t get wrong was I managed to remember to set the focus correctly. So, one full roll of film, and processing costs, and all I have to show for it is one frame of the pier burning, which isn’t even that good anway. Curses!

The next two rolls I shot with the Holga were processed at the same time and have all come out great. I blame my pier fire errors on the fact that it was early in the morning and I was still half asleep!

One of the problems with shooting film is the lag between taking the photos, getting them developed, and getting them back. This is made worse by the fact that no lab in my area can process E6 film, and I’ve got 40 rolls of E6 film to work through…

So my films now go off to Peak Imaging, where I pay through the nose and don’t have any choice in the matter. The cost is about 50% higher than my local lab once you factor in postage, but as I said my local lab doesn’t process E6 so it’s moot.

In this case, Volksfest took place about 4 weeks ago, and I’m only just getting these scanned in. I took advantage of the fact it was a sunny day and put through a couple of rolls of Velvia slide film. On the “cloudy” setting (good old holga) it was just about ok at the ISO50 rating of Velvia, so I’m happy enough that it can be used in bright sunshine.

The problem with going to events like Volksfest is that you get sucked into the whole scene. I now desperately want a Beetle whilst my wife Abby is telling me we need a camper van.

Much as I’d love either I also like being able to afford to eat, and since my mechanical skills start and end with turning it off and on again or hitting it with a hammer, I think it’s best I stick with more modern metal!

I did fire off a fair few frames with my D200, but one car show is much like another and I didn’t really get any shots I liked. At least with the holga it brings something a bit interesting to the image.

In unrelated news, I’ve not only updated our business website over at DnL but just yesterday finished our latest client site, for Jennifer Sinclair, photographer. Who’s next?

Today I finally completed scanning, rotating, cropping and resizing my Holga 120 scans from my recent trip to Venice. Scan, crop, rotate, repeat – how exciting! Through some apparently odd quirk of my current aesthetic sensibilities, I appear to be happier with these than with most of the ones I got from my Nikon D200.

One of the philosophies of shooting with a Holga is that you should “shoot from the hip”. I embraced this when I was in Venice by doing exactly that, with mixed results. It’s fairly obvious which of these I fired off without even composing at all with the viewfinder, and which of them I took a bit more time over.

I love the colour and saturation that these have, much more than the digital images of the same subjects. Some of that is due I think to the fact it’s shot with film, although some of it may be down to my scanner as well. I also like the dreamlike quality you can get with a Holga. This is a clever way of pretending that your out of focus image is supposed to look like that. For these Venetian scenes it works pretty well.

All of these were shot on 5 year out of date Fuji Provia 400. Because the Holga doesn’t offer much control over exposure with just two aperture settings available, all have had only slight tweaks to levels to correct any under/over exposure. Enjoy!

So where does this leave me with the Holga? I still have 20 odd rolls of film to shoot, although I suspect the rolls of Velvia 50ISO aren’t much use to me. I think I now need to start being more adventurous, because as I become more adept at getting shots that are in focus, I think I lose some of the qualities that a Holga brings to an image. Next time I use it I plan to go crazy!

On Saturday I received my processed films back from Peak Imaging. These were the first rolls of 120 E6 slide film I’ve actually had processed properly, and it was really great to see the image in your hands without needing to scan it and convert if from a negative.

Problem was though, with 5 rolls of 12 exposures, I had a lot of scanning to do. It took me all day Sunday to scan in the slides, and I was happy enough with a few of them. Most of the shots were taken in Venice which I’ll post up seperately once I’ve sorted out the ones I like.

I am apparently unable to go more than 5 minutes without taking a photograph of Wilf, so it’s no surprise to see this one, taken a few weeks back when I forced him into a T-shirt to pose for pictures. This was shot on Fuji Provia 400 in my studio

Holga

Holga 120cfn
Wilf do bad things
Fuji Velvia 50

This next picture was taken in my back garden when my cherry tree was in full bloom, and we had a rare day of blue sky. I wanted to see how the exposure would come out when set to “sunny mode” and shot on 400iso film. I struggle to see how you could ever go below 100iso film even on a very sunny day, which renders my 5 rolls of 50iso Fuji Velvia a bit worthless.

Holga

Holga 120cfn
Cherry Blossom
Fuji Velvia 50
More lessons learnt, I feel like I’ve got the hang of the Holga a bit now!

Roll numbers 3 and 4 from the Holga< are with us, and it’s mixed results. The first roll was Kodak Portra ISO400, and came out quite well. The second roll was Fuji Provia ISO100 slide film – and here lies my problem. I rushed out and bought 30 odd rolls of cheap 120 slide film on ebay, then realised my local lab can’t process slide film… Oops.

They offered to cross process the film, which involves processing the E6 film in C41 chemicals, and can apparently give interesting results. In my case they just all came out green! On the plus side they are at least in focus, so I’m making progress!

A sneaky black and white conversion and they are rescued from the bin, but as they are all a bit underexposed, they’ve taken on a Ingmar Bergman look, which I quite like in a desolate and moody kind of way.

The colour pier, and the photo of Wilf the dog are from the Kodak 400 film, the others are all from the Fuji Provia 100.

You can click on any of these to rebigulate them!

Three updates in three days – I really am spoiling you all. In fact with this update, I have now done more updates this year than in the entire of 2007!

Fascinating.

So roll number two of 120 film out of the Holga came back from processing, and seems to be an improvement over the first attempt. I think using 400 ISO film instead of 100 ISO made a lot of difference, that and the fact I’ve learnt what the different focal distances are (boring).

So on to the results. Click on any of the images below to re-bigulate them in a very sexy way.