cerealjoe | Entries tagged with pix:holga lenses

March walk with the original Holga lens on my Olympus. I do like the effect but I can see why I gave up using it rather quickly.

( +2 - trees and more snow )

Two sides of Helsinki.

( +2 - where to get your mail when you live on a boat )

The other day I remembered that it's a while since I last used any of the Holga-for-Olympus-M43 lenses. This means that for the next couple of weeks the fisheye lens will be used and abused. And who can complain when using plastic gives you this…

As Sheldon said, "Good night. In case there is an apocalypse, good luck." And he would know, wouldn't he? He's got more PhDs than most peeps.

But really, can we stop talking about what "the Mayans predicted"? They did not freaked predict anything. They just knew how to keep calendars going and happened to believe in cycles and one happened to end a few weeks ago (due to leap years, etc.) and a new one started. It's ignorant people who predicted stuff by looking at things they did not understand. Instead of an apocalypse we mainly missed a big party to celebrate a new cycle. Bummer.

Heck, the skies were lacking a bit of red the other morning, if you ask me.

Holga, holga, holga, holga! Holga!

Speaking of the Holga lenses, as they're based on one primary lens that's pretty much a pinhole lens, low-light photos come out shitty, even without a secondary wideandle or fisheye lens. As you can imagine, grey days and those lenses are not buddies right now.

I went through this whole phase where onions were a must in salads. Now I don't even want salads all that much. These days I'm into cheese. Not like feta and stuff, proper fatty cheese and all. That stuff was sent from the gods.

My favourite photo from that first Holga-lens outing. There is just something rather eerie about it.

The shot below is what made me think, "this is so cool but these shots are photos that only a mother could love." Because really, the number of things that are wrong with the photo is astounding but the moment I saw it on my screen, I knew it was going to be one of my favourites.

Shooting with the macro and close-up lenses is kind of fun because they all come with their focal distance indicated on them and it's always a game of, "right, well how far is the object I'm trying to shoot... I'd say 15cm. Okie, now which pouch did I put that lens in?" It's a constant game, in a way.

(and all these Holga-lens photos can be found in a bigger format here)

So... I got a new toy. A toy made of quite a few parts. A Holga kit lens that can be used on Olympus PEN cameras. Digital meets pure plastic and it gives quite lovely results.

I honestly think they're lovely but, once again, I have a feeling it has something to do with the fact that some of the shots really do look like only a mother could love them. And I do love them. I actually love the fact that taking photos with these lenses is nothing like taking photos with my usual lenses. Focusing on anything a nightmare and, yet, somehow I adore that.

I got the Kitchen sink kit so it has one main lens that fit on the camera and then tons of add-on lenses that fit on top of that one (fisheye, wide angle, tele, 3 close-ups, and 2 macro). It's been quite something trying to figure out how each one works! But hey, at least here I can kind of see if my shot is totally out of focus before taking a photo, it's not quite possible with a regular Holga - although, in the end, I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. The not knowing if a shot came out till after you develop the film, that is. There is a certain appeal to it. That's why toy cameras are quite popular, I suppose.