Category Archives: Holga

Oh my! I thought I had posted all of the photos from film that I had. But no, there was another roll just sitting there collecting virtual dust.

And lucky me (and you), this is my favorite film so far – FujiChrome Provia 100.

I took this shots before leaving on the Memorial Day trip to Oregon. The first four were taken at Larabee Beach near Bellingham, Washington.

We saw over 100 purple star fish there. Some people call them “sea stars,” but those people need lives.

I guess I like this film because it can give some really realistic colors when it wants to.

But dips into weird darkness when it feels like it.

I’m sure it had more to do with the sun and the plastic toy camera that I was using than the film itself.

Oh, take a look at this picture. It’s the wonderful neon Portland sign defaced by the asshat trying to lease out space in the building. This is worse than pointless graffiti.

Sometimes it would be nice for these shots to work out. But the sun is full of glare.

Little known fact: You can focus a Holga. In this photo, I forgot to. Some people say that it doesn’t make a difference where the focus is, but these people aren’t quite right. For far away shots, it really doesn’t matter. But when you get closer, it certainly does.

I’ve been thinking about which one of my cameras I like best. It’s really hard to figure out. The Holga is fun and simple. I like that. It produces some interesting shots with happy accidents. But sometimes I just want a nice shot.

Kodak’s Porta 400 was the first film I used in the Holga (not that long ago). It was suggested to me as a good film with fine grain and forgiving in bad lighting. All of those things were true. The film is also used by photographers who want to accurately capture skin tones. It provides a fairly subdued saturation with mild contrast.

The Pacific Northwest is strange in its lighting. It can be a “sunny” day, yet still be mostly cloudy. It’s nice that the sun shines, but it’s a very muted light. As seen in this post, it can be challenging to capture. A 400 speed film allows you to take photos on bright or dim days with very little variation in the final outcome (sort of).

The problem, for me anyway, is that I don’t really like how Porta 400 looks.

Sometimes you can get these really saturated colors with a whited out sky…

Other times, you get whatever this is. Compare this shot to another from the same location using the 1914 Brownie and a cross processed slide film (Velvia 100). These were literally taken within a minute of each other.

I guess my biggest problem is the lack of contrast. It’s a very soft photo. I do like how it deals with greens, but the softness bugs me a little.

All that said, I don’t think I really could have taken this shot with 100 speed film (with a Holga, anyway). There just isn’t enough light or slow enough shutter speed to do it. So 400 speed film allows me to capture shots that I wouldn’t normally be able to get. But if I don’t really like them, what’s the point?

But living up here, you do need a 400 speed film. For that, I might start testing out others. There is a Porta 400VC (“vivid color”) that boots both saturation and contrast. There’s also FujiChrome’s Provia 400X, which is high in saturation. That’s about it, however. It’s becoming harder and harder to find film these days, and so the odd ball stuff is getting phased out. And there is, of course, always expired film.

Film, like food, has an expiration date. Unlike food, however, you can still use it long after the date has passed. The results vary greatly upon how the film was stored.

I recently picked up some Kodak Ektachrome that expired in 1989. It’s slide film, which makes it touchy and fairly unforgiving, especially in a Holga – a plastic toy camera with two aperture settings (F8 and F11). It’s also 64ISO, a slow film that requires a lot of light. It being over 20 years old makes it even less photo sensitive, and so it requires pretty much the brightest day ever.

We don’t have a lot of those in the Pacific Northwest, and so, when I tried to shoot with this, I got some mixed results.

US Route 30 in Oregon has a lot of old bridges. Apparently, in the early 1900s, the highways were made with people in mind. Many of the bridges have walkways so you can check out the bridge and the stream/waterfalls, etc. It’s great! The world under the bridge is dark and green and just fascinating. It looks different from how this photo captured it, but it feels exactly like this. Dark and gritty.

Like with the Provia 100F that I recently shot with, I needed more light for this low speed film. This is, I believe, the Painted Hills. I waited for the sun to come out. It did and this is still what I got.

Hey there, sun! This was at the Sumpter Valley Railroad and the sun was wonderful bright! This is exactly what I’m looking for in desert film.

We rode in the cupola of the caboose and I was able to squeeze my head and camera out of the window to take this shot looking out towards the locomotive. It’s a bit dark and ill-defined, but still fun.

There’s something about a porch with a lazy boy recliner upon it that just makes you take a photo. There’s quite a bit of grain in this shot, but i think it still works.

I captured this building with three different cameras using three different films. I have no idea which is my favorite, but I do like this one. The shadows are great and the sky is a deep blue.

This is Cathedral Rock in the John Day Fossil Beds. This, like a lot of the other landscape shots that I’ve taken, really captures the feel of the land.

And that’s what I like about shooting on strange film stock with a Holga. It doesn’t give you a realistic view of what the subject looked like. What it does give you is how it felt to be there. We see a lot of surreal landscapes out here. They’re impossible to capture on an image. I’ve tried with digital for years and nothing does the landscape justice.

The odd filmstock that I’ve been using doesn’t accurate capture it either, but it tends to reproduce the off-kilter feel, the unusual panorama.

My favorite film to shoot on is FujiChrome Provia 100, but this might come in a close second once I figure out exactly how to use it.

I’ve not tried THAT many different kinds of film, but so far, I like FujiChrome Provia 100. My only complaint is that it’s a little grainy. For that, I can always switch to 100F

FujiChrome is slide film. That means that it’s developed differently than regular negative film. However, if you develop it using the same process as negative film, you sometimes get some odd color effects.

The look that I’ve been after with the Holga is very similar to what I’m getting with Provia 100.

It’s got a dirty, gritty feel, like a 70s cop movie.

It captures contrast much better than the Kodak Porta 400 that I was using as a default.

There are some drawback, of course. For one, it can only be used on sunny days. And then, you have to really pay attention to where the sun is, as it captures shadows almost too well.

I’ve got a few other films to try, such as Kodak’s Ektar (which I’m really excited about) and some Kodak EktaChrome 64ISO that expired in the mid 80s. I’m super ridiculously excited about that one.

Of course, I’ll post my findings here.