The iconic Holga has a gaggle of tasty new features. A colour wheel tints your flash with yellow, red, blue, or clear gels. A "B" setting holds the shutter open for dreamy, natural background / flashed foreground images, or pure night-time long exposures. A tripod nut keeps your Holga steady, and a new 6x6 plastic mask yields tighter, sharper images.
The incredible colour-flash technology - responsible for quite a lot of heat and bother among the Lomographic crowd - has now been extended to the iconic medium-format Holga. Using a combination of coloured flash light and a long shutter exposure, this revolutionary item can create some of the most mind-blowing images that you have ever seen. When this new functionality is paired with the Holga's already hectic characteristics (soft focus, light leaks, vignetting), the results are devastating.
Everything you need to begin your Holga career is right here at your quivering fingertips. Read through the manual, pour over the full colour poster, wipe your sweaty, excited brow, pop in the batteries, load up the film, square your jaw, tape up the seams, squint your eyes, breathe slowly and evenly, and release the shutter. You are on your way.
The 5 Fundamentals of Holga:
- Free yourself from rules
Holga neither knows nor respects any rules. Its sheer simplicity is your key to power. Think of the Holga not as a camera, but as paintbrush, liberally splashing your medium-format canvas with exactly the elements that you choose. Envision your desires and manipulate your Holga to bring them into reality.
- Embrace random results
Holga is a loose cannon; an unpredictable partner who sometimes makes its own decisions despite your most strident attempts at control. Many times, your best creations will be the result of your most foolish mistakes or oversights. Don't fight it! Roll with the punches and stay flexible.
- Disarm your subjects
Holga is not one to be taken seriously. It looks oversized, kinda clumsy, a little toy-like, and definitely not intimidating. Your subjects will relax, have fun, and open up for your lens. Go with this. Natural is best - let yourself flow right along with Holga's innate power to strip away pretence and posturing.
- Engage individuality
Each Holga is unique and different from the rest. Some produce brighter images, some more colourful images. Some leak light through the back, some through the side, and some don't leak at all. Each Holga is an individual, and will leave its special signature on every photograph that it takes. Appreciate these inherent quirks and seek to employ several Holgas for a range of results.
- Get Your Hands Dirty
The simplistic mechanics of Holga invite you to play with them. Dive inside its inner workings and discover what makes the Holga tick. Experiment with different modifications and treatments. Tape up the sides, slap a filter on the lens, pinhole the lens cap. When your camera wears out - cut the springs, streak the lens, or pull out the guts. Experiment and innovate. Get started with the modifications in our instruction book.
Filters
If the Colour Flash feature has opened the door for new Holga creativity, then this incredible set of filters has blown it clean off! The Holga Filter Set includes three series of distinct plastic filters, and a universal plastic mount to hold them right in front of your lens.
- Soft Surround (Red, Blue, Orange, Grey)
A clear little circle island sits within an frosted, coloured sea. The centre of your image is plucked out of the surrounding noise, and forcefully thrust into the attention of your audience. The background fades away in a dim, soft wash of blur.
- Solid Colour (Yellow, Orange, Red, Blue)
The first three colours are of particular interest to our B&W aficionados. Yellow brings out clouds in a blue sky, reduces freckles, and darkens blue eyes. Orange yields contrasty skies, brightens yellow, orange, and red tones, and heavily darkens green. Red creates dramatic contrast - blue skies darken to nearly black and fair skin is rendered white as snow. The Blue filter is useful to "cool" down a colour image - and has the nice effect of making orange night-time lighting look more white. It's especially good at dusk and night-time. All of these filters can also be used with colour film in the bright daytime for a vibrant monochrome effect.
- Multi-Image (Quintuple, Triple Image, Triangular)
Any addicts of the glam and power-rock albums of the 70's is certainly familiar with the psychedelic multi-image filter effect. Using several refracting surfaces, these filters break your subject into repeating multi-images, with a sexy soft blur between each section.
The Quintuple filter yields five repeating images in a pentagon formation. he Triple Image filter gives you three copies, moving laterally across. And, the Triangular filter (predictably) creates a repeating pattern of three portraits.
Contents
- Holga Colour Flash camera
The famous Medium-format dynamo - now with a built in flash and colour-gel filters! Prepare to employ your trusty Holga day or night as the flash opens up new worlds of low-light images with the beloved Holga effects - soft focus, double-exposures, streaming colours, intense vignetting, and unpredictable light leaks. A "B" setting keeps the shutter open for as long as you like, and the dandy new tripod thread allows for smooth tripod mounting.
- "Mes Vacances Avec Holga" photo Book by Frederic Lebain
A self-taught photographer, Mr. Lebain first saw the Holga 4 years ago in a New York photo shop. Since then, he has become one of the premier Holga artists in the world, holding exhibitions throughout Europe and Asia and being published in the venerable likes of Jalouse and DS Magazine. This 90 page book is a visual chronicle of Mr. Lebain's travels over the past few years, as told through his very finest Holga images. Softcover. Published by the Lomographic Society, 2002.
- 1 Roll of Medium Format Film
Stick it into Holga's gaping mouth.
- 1 Roll of Black Opaque Tape
The perfect solution for light-leaking seams that you want to cover. This special variant of electrical tape will not leave a nasty glue residue after it's used. How nice!
- 1 Full Colour Editorial Poster
The History and profile of Holga on one side, a breathtaking graphic on the other.
- 1 Multi-lingual Instruction Book
English - German - Italian - French - Spanish - Japanese - Korean - Chinese.
- 2 "AA" Alkaline Batteries
Size 22cm (8.65in) x 17,5cm (7in) x 9,5cm (3.75in)
Weight 730g (1.6lb)
History of Holga :
Hong Kong 1982. The manufacturing and production hub of the world is burning at a full flame, As with their neighbours in Japan and China, photography is an intense national hobby and obsession. New camera designs and productions are churned out daily, feeding the huge domestic and import markets. From within this world of manic creation and innovation comes the Holga, a distinctly un-modern and somewhat prehistoric throwback to the early days of camera mechanics.
The concept is simple - a minimal and inexpensive camera using medium format 120 film. It would contain only the bare necessities for photo mechanisms, and provide a cheap and accessible alternative for students and enthusiasts to dip their toes into the otherwise very expensive world of medium format photography. Reflecting the shining landscape around them, this new camera is named after the term "ho gwong," meaning "very bright." After throwing a European spin onto this phrase, the moniker "HOLGA" is minted.
This dead simple camera is met with a warm welcome, establishing a strong yet small base of Holga aficionados. Birth, death, celebration, ritual, and everything in-between is caught on lo-fi medium-format emulsions - amplified and focused through the plastic lens of this bare bones, oversized camera.
Over the next 10 years, Holga enjoys a popularity explosion. A global community of photographers, students, creative types, and generally fabulous individuals see the simplicity and ability of Holga, and fully embrace it. This cult following organizes around the Holga, praising its insane characteristics, unpredictable effects, and stunning results. Teachers and professors actively employ the Holga as a training tool - simultaneously teaching their students the fundamentals of photography while opening their minds to new and unexpected techniques. The very features that many would consider to be fatal defects in a "normal" camera have become the most treasured assets of the Holga new school.
Today, the Holga movement is expanding every single minute, with new devotees, organizations, and online sites spreading like wildfire. Photographic exhibitions are held in some of the most prestigious galleries on the planet; showcasing the work of one of the most unlikely artistic tools ever employed. Competitions, interactions, and communication are tossed around the online & offline communities, encouraging and amplifying the excellent work of the Holga obsessed. Ironically, as camera design becomes more technical, automatic, and sophisticated, Holga's low-tech appeal grows stronger and stronger for us; those who relish its quirky and unpredictable nature. While designers around the world are racking their brains to create increasingly more advanced and complex cameras; the Holga will continue to grow as a steadfast counterculture item, taking away the complications of technology and simplifying the equation to four critical elements - your eye, the lens, the film, and your subject.
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