If Diana is the big sister of the lomo family, then the big brother is most certainly the iconic Holga! Something of a renegade, this guy is exciting, sometimes unpredictable and, let’s be honest, probably cooler than we’ll ever be…

Holga Starter Kit, $165 (available in a range of colours)

The Lo-Down: Like the Diana, the Holga is a medium format film camera that produces amazing photos. The Holga is renowned for its vignetting, light leaks and other cool distortions, as well as the super-saturated colours it produces:

The Holga is prone to (and famous for) light leaks: light can penetrate the body of the camera and produce light incidences on your negatives. The effects can vary from a slight colour tint through to a fully burnt out image with the film exposure number burned onto the negative. Our advice? Embrace it: it’s all a part of the Holga’s charm (plus, the leaks often make for very cool shots):

The Holga is also famous for its plastic lens, which will have you seeing the world through lomo’s softer focus eyes:

The camera’s uncoupled advance and shutter mean you can shoot limitless times on the same frame, creating some brilliant multiple exposures:

Borrowing from its cousin, the delightful Colorsplash camera, the Holga has a colour wheel that sits around its built-in electronic flash, allowing you to tint your flash (and photo) with a red, yellow, or blue hue, as well as a clear filter. What fun!

As well as all of that, the Holga has 2 shutter settings (a regular daytime setting or a long-exposure option), 2 aperture settings, a tripod thread and a very easy to manage focus system. The starter kit comes with a book full of Holga-inspirations (‘The World Through A Plastic Lens’) and everything you need to start snapping!

Lomo-experts Tip: Give the exotic long-exposure shutter setting a try. During the day, pair the long exposure (‘B’) setting with the flash to capture a sharp, flashed subject in front of a moving, glowing background. At night, this setting has some stellar effects:

Need we say more? As far as big brothers go, this fella is well worth looking up to! Lomo’s Holga camera is available at both Pigeonhole stores.

Anna xx

Tags: holga, lomo, lomovember

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Camera, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.