Star Trails

I left my Holga out overnight with the shutter open. My method to hold the shutter open was to wrap the shutter release round and round with an elastic band. Some people just cut the shutter spring, but that's too permanent for me.



The exposure was about 6 hours give or take. I picked the camera back up before dawn, but it was already getting light, probably would have had more trails if I'd gotten up a little bit earlier.

Nostalgia

These two pictures are very nostalgic looking. The Holga, teamed with the black and white film produces something from the 70's, or earlier! The two subjects here also enhance the effect - the ancient kitchen and a simple seaside scene.

Here is Diane again with some butternut squash.



..and Anstruther seafront.



Both remind me of something my granda would have taken.

Double Exposure

One of the most fun things about the Holga is the capacity to do double, or multiple exposures with it. I like the unpredictability of this. One fun approach is to shoot the same subject twice from two very different angles, which is what I did here;



The exposures don't have the same saturation as each other, and this leads to lovely dreamy effects, like a flashback sequence in a film.

Norah

An experiment with the sun and the Holga. Turns out Holga likes the sun. Lots. Still plenty of grain and vignette going on. It's a little dark, but it's a fun effect nevertheless.

Introduction to the Holga

This is my Holga



I bought it a year ago in Bologna - though they can be easily found on eBay for less cash! I'd never even heard of the camera before I bought it, and I spent a few days considering the purchase before I finally went for it. I've had a couple of rolls of film through it now - I don't like to take too many as it's expensive to develop the 120 film (£9 for the 12 exposures). My favourite roll is by far the most recent one, my first black and white film (pictured above).



Here is the second shot on the roll, the chapel tower. My Holga is finally developing that natural vignette effect so praised on the lomography website. It's a nice focaliser. I'm also a fan of the slight grain, and I love the fact that it manages to capture clouds on a sunny day!

Today I also loaded my first film into my polaroid...

Blogging again...

This time with a more specific purpose! I've recently acquired several old (and not so old) film cameras. Some of these were from charity shops, one was given to me by my granda. I only really got interested in taking photographs again when I was given a Olympus SP560-UZ "creative" digital camera for Christmas in 2007. Before then I was taking tourist pictures and macros with my Olympus compact, and before that, with the family 35mm compact.

Since then, I've been enjoying snapping thousands of pictures and uploading them to my computer, and to flickr. A year ago I bought a Holga, and this got me interested in film.

I don't have a lot of money to spend on photography, which can be an expensive hobby. I learned this especially from the Holga, which takes 120 film - not available in the supermarket, and not cheap to get developed in Jessop's! I don't mind buying film, but I'm spending so much on developing that it's starting to get a little too expensive.

I've already had one or two rolls developed from the Holga, and I'm quite pleased with the results, especially the black and white roll. The low-tech aspect of film is very appealing to me. When I open up the Holga, for example, I can see all the parts and I know what they do.

Anyway, today I got the first roll of black and white film back from the Holga, so I'm going to post those results first. Most of these still very much come under the heading of test shots! I'll start with one I feel came out well.



This was done on "bulb" setting, steadied on a tripod. The exposure was a good few seconds, and I think the light trail came out really nicely. This picture is my best one of the night, despite having a go with my Olympus.