I know there are lots of Holga shooters out there as I follow many of you or see your posts in Holga Groups. These cameras opened a new chapter in photography for me, both as a collector and shooter and my only regret is I waited so long to give them a try. Now, I keep about 4 Holgas loaded with different films including Kodak Gold 200, Lomo Turquoise, an infrared sensitive film, and and a regular panchromatic film.
There are a number of Holga accessories I wanted to try that I found in articles or discussions online. Unfortunately, when you find something you want, it usually takes a few months for most accessories to turn up from the used market. Using Holgas, you may sometimes wish for a wider angle, telephoto, or even fisheye lens. With the Holga slip-on lenses, you can meet the need, but with some limitations. I watched for the slip-on Holga lenses for over 6 months before spotting a camera kit that included all three lenses. These lenses more commonly turn up individually and many are hard to find. Since you don’t want to waste money on a lens you wouldn’t like, it is nice to see comparison shots of the same subject at the same time to help you decide if one or more will be for you.
The opening picture shows my Holga with the Wide Lens 0.5X, the Fisheye Lens and The Tele Lens 2.5X. The lenses just slide over the existing Holga lens and focus is set on infinity. Note that the Wide and Tele lenses are marked 120/135 so they obviously work with each format. I’m not sure about the Fisheye but hopefully it also works with both formats.
The next shot shows a Holga from above. Please ignore the image clutter in the lenses as the shots were taken outside and the pattern is from trees reflected on the plastic lenses.
After you slide the lens on, it looks like this.
Results vary for pretty good to pretty bad, depending on your tolerance for vignetting and loss of quality. I just center the subject in the viewfinder and hope for the best as there don’t seem to be any viewfinder masks for these lenses.
Let’s take a look.
The normal lens view is first followed by the wide angle, fisheye, and telephoto. You can tell a lot when you enlarge these on your screen.
Here is the viewfinder view of the next shot.
For my use, I will use the wide angle lens the most. The image quality is nearest the original lens and I find that I would want wide angle views much more often than telephoto. The fisheye and telephoto both seem to have more image degradation while all three exhibit significant vignetting. It helps if you like or at least can tolerate the vignetting.
For this test, I used a roll of Ilford Delta 100 film, semi-stand developed in Rodinal.
I have three other Holga articles on 35mmc. Click the link to give them a look. https://www.35mmc.com/author/nwellons/
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