The plastic of the Holga body itself is reasonably sturdy, and the light-trap around the back itself is molded accurately. And perhaps best of all, the camera uses medium format film which enables the Holga to make surprisingly sharp photos with beautiful depth. The Holga camera was initially introduced to the Chinese public, in 1982, as an inexpensive camera for everyday use. If it’s your first foray away from 35mm though, like it was for me, you’ll need to read the following guide.

The Holga range includes a whole range of models from half frames in 35mm to faux TLRs, and there are a multitude of colours to choose from.

First up is a bunch of lens adapters, which are simple attachments that slide over the barrel of the existing lens and change its field of view. The 120 GCFN in black is a Holga G lass Lens Camera with a built-in C olour F lash which has four different colours (normal, blue, red and yellow). Before you load your film, you can choose whether you want to be taking 6×6 photographs with it or 6×4. After decades of photographic advancement, culminating for now with digital wonders, the Holga is a refreshing reminder to stop taking ourselves so seriously.

While I have used reliable films like, Kodak T-Max 100, I have also run through some expired Portra 160 VC, which gave some interesting results. I had not realized I could create double exposure and that really excited me, I love playing around and doing experimental images. They’ve been known to slide down of their own accord on plenty of occasions, which can ruin your film if the camera opens up. The Holga falls firmly into the class of “toy camera”; virtually the whole camera is made of plastic even the lens (although some do have glass lenses which may or may not be a step up).

My style is candid, capturing authentic moments for my couples all over the Bay Area and Northern California. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The myth of the Holga spread quickly and the ensuing Holgamania gripped the photographic world for much of the 2000s. Sadly, it didn’t hold, and the one exposure I tried indoors didn’t work out because the flash didn’t fire. The third issue I found is that the viewfinder has a noticeably narrower field of view than the lens.