When you shoot with a Holga, you surrender yourself to the gods of photography.
--JEM
I just made that up. It's not exactly profound, but I'll stand by it. Shooting with any Holga camera is a hit or miss proposition. If you're lucky, you'll get something good, and, if you do, it's because the gods smiled on you.
That's not a criticism of Holgas, by the way. In fact, it's why we love them.
ADRL Dragstock X, Rockingham Dragway, 7-8 September 2013. [Click on any image to see a much larger version.]
This is a review, of sorts, of Holga's new-ish 120 Panoramic camera. (It's been around for a couple years.) The verdict is simple: If you like Holgas, you'll like the Panoramic. If you don't, stay away.
ADRL Dragstock X, Rockingham Dragway, 7-8 September 2013.
I'm not sure precisely who inspired me to try out the Panoramic. I do know that I saw some photos on a website that were made with the camera on and liked them a lot. They were everything that I admired about Holga images -- I've made some of my favorite photos with a Holga, here and here -- and there were twice as big.
The standard Holga uses 120 film and produces negatives that are roughly 6 centimeters square (or 2 and 1/4 inches), hence the term 6x6 (or 2 1/4 x 2 1/4). The Panoramic's negatives are notionally twice as big -- 6x12 -- producing a wide, sweeping view of whatever happens to be in front of the camera.
ADRL Dragstock X, Rockingham Dragway, 7-8 September 2013.
I like wide and sweeping as much as I like Holgas. So, having discovered the camera, I thought I'd buy one and take it to the next race on my schedule, the American Drag Racing League's [ADRL] Dragstock X, at Rockingham Dragway, in North Carolina.
ADRL Dragstock X, Rockingham Dragway, 7-8 September 2013.
I ran eight rolls of film through the camera at the race, which is enough to allow me to develop some fairly reliable first impressions.
The good news is that the camera is poorly assembled out of flimsy materials, with a horrible plastic lens, crude and unreliable controls, and a wildly inaccurate viewfinder. In other words, it's just like every other Holga, and so are the pictures it produces.
As you can see, the images are reasonably sharp in the center of the frame and quickly degenerate toward the edges. (Click on any photo to see a much larger version.) There is also massive light fall-off from the center outward. These factors create the Holga look, which I like a lot. I think it's especially effective in the first three images here.
Holgas, by the way, are also known for their light leaks, which cause unpredictable dark patches on the negatives (and bright patches on prints and scans). I covered my camera's seams with black masking tape, after I loaded the film. At the same time, I covered the red plastic window on the back with tape and only removed the tape in order to see the frame numbers when I advanced the film. I didn't experience any light leaks, which is just fine by me.
ADRL Dragstock X, Rockingham Dragway, 7-8 September 2013.
There's some bad news, as well. The viewfinder and the lens see the world differently. Most importantly, a well-centered image in the viewfinder will result in a negative that's aimed too high. (See the second photo from the top.) The viewfinder also chops off the left and right edges of the frame. When you see your negatives the first time, you'll be delighted by the extra width.
You get width, but not as much height as you'd expect. Holga claims that the Panoramic produces 6x12 negatives. Mine doesn't. They're actually closer 5x12. But it's better off the top and bottom than the sides, as far as I'm concerned.
ADRL Dragstock X, Rockingham Dragway, 7-8 September 2013.
A couple of other considerations... The single shutter speed is slow. I'd guess it's about 100th of a second. The car above is blurred, for instance, despite the fact that it's generating a lot more smoke than speed. The Panoramic's aperture has two settings -- sunny and cloudy. Using ISO 400 film, the sunny setting produced perfectly adequate exposures on a bright day. The cloudy setting, however, underexposed the film in open shade.
I didn't shoot enough film to be sure about this next point, but it seems to me that the lens produces color negative negatives that skew blue. At least, that's what it felt like when I scanned the negatives and worked with them in Lightroom. (I was shooting Kodak Portra 400.) In some, the color was pretty wonky, and I'm not entirely happy with my corrections.
That's enough complaining. You use a Holga precisely because its faults and quirks occasionally produce magical results. And because they're a lot of fun (especially when every other photographer on the starting line is using professional Nikon and Canon DSLRs).
The Panoramic will never be the camera that I use the most. But I'm willing to bet that I'll have one with me when I head back out to the track.
*
This post is obviously not a race report. Click here to read my impressions of the race. Both Drag Racing Online and CompetionPlus have excellent accounts of the racing,
*
Comments