Old-school Toy Holga


I received a Holga 120 CGFN last Christmas from Hong Kong!
If you’re wondering what the alphabets mean, it just means that this camera comes with colour flash and a glass lens. I’m a newbie when it comes to Holga, having no idea how to properly load the film and snap the photo, much less how to make full use of the colour flash and glass lens. I hope to get better after an online tutorial!

There are many different types of Holga cameras and it started off as a boring black, inexpensive, 120 medium-format toy film camera. Haha, but the one I got look like this:

This is how it looks when the back is popped. Notice the spool is rather long? That’s because this is a medium-format camera, so it doesn’t use the regular 35mm film. This also means the photo processing fee is slightly more expensive. More than S$1 per piece!

Now here are some photos my assistant and I took separately on this camera. Although I could take a maximum of 12 photos, only 7 turned out. The rest were underexposed. With the 7, there’s a bit of overlapping because we didn’t know how much to wind the camera before taking the next shot. But that’s the beauty of film cameras, you don’t have the luxury of checking the image once it’s taken, so it’ll always be a surprise!

That's me on the 梅花桩, holding on to the lion's head.

That's the stunt coordinator “阿德” doing the somersault as my body double.

Here we are doing a scene from episode 3 of the Carlsberg Telemovie Showcase.

That's Terry, our regular lion dance body double!

One of the rare moments he's actually smiling to the camera.

There's Adrian and I

This was taken while we were doing a scene in episode 2 of the Carlsberg Telemovie Showcase. "The Runaway Bride"

12 responses to “Old-school Toy Holga

  1. Love your blog! You’re so pretty =)

    I JUST got the Diana F+ camera! Still haven’t gotten my pictures developed yet, but I love how cute and retro it is!

  2. wow it’s very nice photos!I like d first one of you and d fourth pic frm d top.
    wonder do u have bigbirdfly as well 🙂 it’s also a lomo cam 🙂

  3. wow really nice camera!
    the camera colors looks funky and kidish 😀
    me like! ahaha xD
    i like how the camera effect comes out…
    like a old vintage border thing or how u say it. xD

    – Jayne Chong
    West Sacramento, CA

  4. Welcome to the Holga club! I own a Holga 135BC and I heart it totally! I even named it Poppy…hahaha.
    It’s really fun to play with and I love the mystery feel of how the pictures will turn out.

    Well, have fun!

  5. the camera is very cute and looks like a toy, but not very useful leh. Maybe i dunnoe how to appreciate the use of different types of camera.

  6. wow. very random but pretty pictures!

  7. hey! the handling fees i paid to develope the photos was $5 and each photo abt 35cents or sumth.. Have fun! 😉

  8. Aiyo! You don’t have to develop every single photos. Just ask the photoshop asst. to help you scan onto a CD!

    And if you feel a shot is nice, go back and ask them to develop into a print!

    Cheaper and you dun have to go back and scan your prints too.

  9. hey:D i have HOLGA as well, You could actually get an adapter to fix it into the back of the cam where you place the film to use normal film of 36 pictures. The adapter is just less than 6 bucks. 😀 as for the winding part there is actually a black sticker that comes along with it that should be stick on and turn to the next number of picture taken, like the 6 or 10 shots for example:DD just some stuff i know that i wanna share 😀

  10. holga 🙂
    Lomo rocksss!!

  11. Holga cameras are addictive. I just bought one from Amazon (also a 120N medium format.) Try using a 400 ISO or higher b/w film. The results takes you back to the “good ole days” of early photography. Arrgh … I agree it’s expensive processing the film, but after reading your entry I feel like buying a few more rolls of film and go shoot.

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