I used my Holga for the very first time a few weeks back and read a lot of articles about ‘hacking’ the camera to take 35mm film. I took about 18 shots and couldn’t wait to get the photos developed and have prints made. I went to three different specialist photo shops trying to get prints made! The first place kindly processed the film free of charge but it was a nightmare trying to get prints made. In the end I paid £15 for 17 prints of which the image was cropped and half the picture was missing, disappointing to say the least! I would love for someone to tell me if I did something wrong! I’ve read that it’s possible to invest in a film scanner but at the moment that’s definitely not possible.
Here are the images anyway, I do love the effects especially the double exposures, it’s just such a shame about the cropping, if anyone has any advice I’d really appreciate it!
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Unfortunately I don’t know anything about Holga cameras, but those pictures are beautiful! Even with a little messed up cropping.
Thank You!
I do love the colours and the blurriness of them but it is a shame about the cropping, i’ll have to do my research a bit better next time!
Thanks for stopping by again Claire, I do appreciate your comments! x
If it was consistent you might even be able to plan these types of shots, very interesting.
I’m not too sure about golfs conversions for 35mm. You mentioned negative scanners. I think they’re very pricy considering most ive seen do either 35mm or 120; not both. I good alternative, something I’ve invested in, are film scanning masks. they are sold through lomography.com. you slide your film through the mask and scan them with a flatbed scanner. they were designed for photographers who shoot endless panoramas and sprockets in mind. I got both a 35mm mask and a 120 mask for $50 in a bundle. good luck with your experimenting!
Aw, thank you so much for sharing this with me!
I’ve had so much trouble trying to get prints made using my holga, and i think i’ll definitely invest in film scanning masks. I’ve been meaning to invest in something like this but I just wasn’t sure which one to buy. It’s great to know they sell them on lomography.com
Thanks again for your help!
- Helen
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I don’t think you did anything wrong, you just need to find a photo place that knows how to develop them and not to crop the film holes off!
I recently did the same thing with my Holga. Although I didn’t take it into a shop to be developed I happen to be very lucky in that the school I graduated last year allowed me to come back and develop them myself in their darkroom :) I can tell you though from doing it myself that 1) when you take the photo you have to bear in mind that the change from 120mm film to 35mm will chop out 20% off the top of the image and 20% off the bottom. The other thing is, the way that the negative carrier is designed is to hide those sprocket holes when it sits in the enlarger so that you don’t get the black squares on your images, and so that the negative carrier has a decent amount of the negative to hold on to whilst the light is passing through.
Ah, thank you for sharing that with me!
I didn’t know that using 35mm film chops off 40% of the image, atleast I’ll know for next time!
I think i’m going to try using 120mm next time, i’m just not sure how hard it is to get developed. we’ll see!
Thanks for all your help Maddie!
I had this same problem before I got a scanner (btw, the canoscan 8800f and several other flatbeds DO come with holders for both 120 and 35mm). If you have a digital camera and photoshop; I found a solution in a lomography tipster here: http://www.lomography.com/magazine/tipster/2009/04/10/scan-your-photos-with-a-digital-camera
When you do this with color negative film, remember you have to put the image in photoshop and invert it. Also, you’ll probably need to mess with the levels a little to compensate for the orange color of the actual film material (it’ll make everything look light blue).
Here’s an example of a shot i took with 35mm in my holga and scanned with a lamp and my digital camera: http://timothyirobertson.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/cyclo-in-front-of-palace-phnom-penh-cambodia/
and here are two albums of my lamp scans on my lomo home: http://www.lomography.com/homes/tiro8/albums/1575491-holga-120n-35mm-lamp-scans ; http://www.lomography.com/homes/tiro8/albums/1584483-kodak-brownie-twin-120-lamp-scans
Hope this is helpful!