When Bad Light is Good for Holgas – The Whole Roll

I collect and shoot Holgas, especially the 120 versions.  The plastic lens and exposure limitations work to inspire me in a way that doesn’t happen with 35mm or medium format cameras.

In my collection obsession, I recently discovered a mustard yellow beauty from the Holgawood collection that was released in 2008.  I immediately bought it to add to my own Holgawood collection.

On the day I received the camera that I now call Mr. Mustard, I had planned to visit a nearby town for some shooting.  Fortunately the camera arrived before I had to leave so I checked the operation and all was well.  I knew it was going to be a cloudy day which is normally unsuitable for the 1/125 shutter speed and roughly f/11 lens of the Holga.  My plan was to load with Foma 400 film and push it so I could hopefully have a successful photo shoot.

It was a good bit darker than I expected, even with the cloudy forecast.  To squeeze as much a possible out of the film, I developed it in FPPs version of HC-110 with dilution B for 15 minutes.  That about a 2.5 stop push.

It is rare that I get a whole roll of images that I like but I’m pleased with all so let’s take a look.

Holgas generally produce an image with a relatively sharp center but with fuzzy edges because of the plastic meniscus lens.  That is one of the qualities I love about Holgas.

I consider my Holga images to be more of an art form than a literal documentation of a scene.  I don’t hesitate to crop or use editing sliders to adjust the highlights, shadows, whites and blacks.  I generally spend about 15 seconds editing each image.  Additionally, I remove most of the dust and fiber artifacts that unfortunately how up more often in underexposed images.  Still, it takes only a minute or two to remove the offenders.

When you push an already somewhat grainy film, one of the trade-offs is even more grain.  Fortunately I am one of those photographers who really likes visible grain.  It varies in these images and one reason is the varying light.  Lower light shots usually have the most grain and some of my shots have huge amounts.  That’s fine with me.  The next one is either the winner or loser in the grain category, depending on your viewpoint.

All of the images above were taken in Jackson, Georgia and the one below was taken a half-hour later just east of Griffin, Georgia.

These results make me want to go out more often in poor lighting with my Holgas as I really like the look.  So I will.

If you made it this far, you may want to check out my other Holga articles here on 35mmc.

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