One Lens - One Style - Digital Holga

[Robert Watcher]

Heading to the beach today, I wanted to keep my gear simple.

The trip involves a 3/4 mile walk from our house in 100+ degree weather - a bus out to the Old Market in Sultiava - transfer to another bus that provides a 40 minute ride to Las Penitas.

I charged up the battery for my older Olympue E-PL1 with wrist strap, changed the lens to the fixed f8 plastic Holga I got from China, set the ISO to 400, manual focus was just south of the "mountain" on the lens, set the camera format to square 6x6, and used the dramatic Black and White Art Filter that the camera provides.

Anything interesting was captured along the way. These are a selection of my shots from the day. All are straight out of camera - as composed - as exposed:

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[Robert Watcher]

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[Robert Watcher]

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[Asher Kelman]

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This one picture would make a journey worthwhile. Very impressive. what's important is that the simple lens gets the strokes of gesture and expression and is not over wrought with needless detail.

Rob, this is much better photographer for this.

With photography, we are supposed to exclude and this lens does this, not only outside of the frame, but also outside of the main point of interest.

Asher

 

[Anna Nowakowska]

I am using a plastic Holga with fixed lens too. I amgoing to Barcelona soon And I will share what's came out of the whole idea. And first of all when I will find a good medium format negatives scanner. Any idea what is a good quality negative scanner for medium films?
Thx

 

[Asher Kelman]

I am using a plastic Holga with fixed lens too. I amgoing to Barcelona soon And I will share what's came out of the whole idea. And first of all when I will find a good medium format negatives scanner. Any idea what is a good quality negative scanner for medium films?
Thx

Hi Anna,

It's likely that one wouldn't need an especially good scanner for the film from that camera, if that's your plan. A Canon flatbed scanner for $40 would be fine. Just use Vuescan software, from http://hamrick.com

The license is lifetime, all upgrades Are free!

Even using a brilliant used Mamiya C330 or Yashikamat 60mmx60mm format cameras, that scanner would give quite nice results. If something is so outstanding you need to put it into print at a large size, get that frame professionally scanned for $15- $50 depending on the quality needed.

If you get richer, the Epson 750 Pro scanner is a reasonable choice.

To get above an OD of 3.7 to 3.8, you need to spend much, much more money!!!

Asher

 

[James Lemon]

Great set of images ! I love the grain and the overall texture of them.

 

[Robert Watcher]

Thanks James.

Anna - I really have not done any scans from film in the last 12 years - so am a little out of touch.

I do know that on a couple of occasions for commercial assignments where I shot some black and white film, I paid premium $100 per image drum scans hoping they would be significantly better - and the magazine where the files were to be printed, could not use them. I ended up Fedexing the original film frames to them.

I have tried inexpensive flatbed scanners a few times with some of my medium format film, but was never really that content with the results.

Back in the early 2000's when I was shooting hybrid film/digital - I had a 4,000 dpi dedicated Canon FS4000 35mm film scanner for my professional work. It was a lot of work - but had to be the way it was until I got my first digital cameras in 2004. The only decent results that I could get with that scanner, was when using ViewScan software (as Asher has mentioned).

But dedicated film scanners - especially for medium format film (which is what you Holga will be) - are costly and their is a learning curve. What I would probably do is have the scans made at a one hour lab or maybe even Costco does them. Actually their scanners that are built into their systems like Fuji Frontier do a pretty decent job - probably way better than a flatbed scanner - and are cheap to have made.

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[James Lemon]

Thanks James.

Anna - I really have not done any scans from film in the last 12 years - so am a little out of touch.

I do know that on a couple of occasions for commercial assignments where I shot some black and white film, I paid premium $100 per image drum scans hoping they would be significantly better - and the magazine where the files were to be printed, could not use them. I ended up Fedexing the original film frames to them.

I have tried inexpensive flatbed scanners a few times with some of my medium format film, but was never really that content with the results.

Back in the early 2000's when I was shooting hybrid film/digital - I had a 4,000 dpi dedicated Canon FS4000 35mm film scanner for my professional work. It was a lot of work - but had to be the way it was until I got my first digital cameras in 2004. The only decent results that I could get with that scanner, was when using ViewScan software (as Asher has mentioned).

But dedicated film scanners - especially for medium format film (which is what you Holga will be) - are costly and their is a learning curve. What I would probably do is have the scans made at a one hour lab or maybe even Costco does them. Actually their scanners that are built into their systems like Fuji Frontier do a pretty decent job - probably way better than a flatbed scanner - and are cheap to have made.

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I used a lab recently that offers the Hasselblad Flextight X5, technology based on the virtual drum scanner concept, producing sharp, high-end quality scans at up to 8000+ ppi; completely oil-free and available for any film format. Of course they offer more economical scans as well, depending on what you need, but Costco and maybe even London Drugs are worth checking out.