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I’m pretty sure it has been over 5 years since I shot any film. Seriously, I don’t think I have exposed any since the day I bought my first digital SLR. I certainly have never shot a professional assignment on film.

That said, since I have been back in the states I have been really eager to shoot film again. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I guess I am just yearning for something different. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my DSLR, and I still love the instant gratification a digital camera gives me, but the images for some reason are just not that interesting to me at the moment.

So one night, I woke up and had the thought, “why don’t I just shoot some film and have some fun?” This was of course immediately followed by the thought, “How the hell would I do that?”

It’s sort of funny actually. I really had to think pretty hard about what it would take to do something that used to be so commonplace. I absolutely, under no circumstances want to set up a dark room. I really hate dealing with all those chemicals and trying to keep the dust off my negatives while in the enlarger--yuk!

So, I sat there and wondered about it for a while. What camera would I use? What type of film? Do they even make the film I used to use anymore? And then it hit me, like a ton of stop-bath--HOLGA!

I remembered that someone had once given me a Holga as a sort of gag gift. I remembered seeing it while unpacking all of my stuff from storage. It was still brand new, in the box, never used. This is going to be fun,

If you have never heard of a Holga, I should stop right here and explain. A Holga is by far the worst camera ever manufactured. It is quite possibly built by a team of individuals who themselves have never taken a single photograph of anything, ever. It is made entirely of plastic, with a small plastic lens, and it accepts medium format film, or whatever else you can manage to squeeze into its cheap plastic casing.

But while the Holga is nearly horrible in about every aspect, it is loved by thousands the world over. The main reason being, the images it can produce. They are like nothing else you have ever seen. Holga images have a distinct quality (or lack thereof) that can only be described as “Holga-ish.”

What’s more, the Holga camera is such a simplistic piece of crap, that it really brings the photographer back to basics. If you can make a decent image with a Holga, well then, you should be on your way with your $5000 DSLR kit.

The Holga weighs about an ounce or two, and you can easily forget that it is hanging from its thin strap around your neck or shoulder. It has a fixed focal length lens, about the equivalent of a 50mm on a 35mm camera, and two f-stops. The main f-stop, and the only one you should use, is f/8. The other claims to be f/5.6, but its really just the square hole left behind when you move the f/8 aperture out of the way. The camera has a single shutter speed, of which I have yet to determine. It takes medium format film and can be modified to make a 6x6cm image.

That brings me to the best thing about Holga--the modifications. Any serious Holga shooter will have undoubtedly modified their Holga. Some Holga photogs go pretty crazy, and there are even companies out there that will modify your Holga for you. I prefer to go the simple route, with a few basic mods, that are really necessary.

First, I remove the 6x4.5 mask so that I can shoot square 6x6 images. After doing this I need to add some masking tape over the sharp edges left behind so the film wont get scratched. I also basically cover the entire inside with black masking tape, and much of the outside. The Holga leaks more light than it blocks, so this is very necessary. I also add a few pieces of cardboard here and there to help keep the film wound tight.

There are plenty of Holga how-to websites out there, just type the word “Holga” into Google and you should find plenty of info. In my pile of storage items I found a couple boxes of 120 film. I wanted to keep things simple for now and stick to C-41 processed film so I located a lab close by that could process 120, and went out to take some pictures.

The best way to get into shooting with the Holga is to just go out and shoot, shoot, shoot. Don’t worry about exposure, focus, or anything like that. It’s all about the light and composition. Look for that and Holga will do the rest. No one will ever see you coming with a Holga around you neck, so don’t be afraid to use it. If you drop it, lose it or someone steals it, no big loss--they only cost about $20!

I spent a few days walking around with my Holga. I took it with me to WWDC08 in San Francisco, and eventually shot about 15 rolls of films (you get 12 exposures on each). Five rolls were shot on Kodak’s BW400CN, which is a black and white film that can be processed in standard C-41 chemistry. The rest were shot with Fuji 400 and 800 color film. Some of the film was new, and some was long expired. The cool thing about Holga is that it really doesn’t matter if the film is old or new, and if anything the color shift from expired film will just add to aesthetic.

Once I had shot a good deal of film, I had it processed. I didn’t have any prints made as I was planning to somehow digitize them. I have just written up an article over at AUPN about the process of digitizing my Holga images using a Nikon D100 and a macro lens, so if you are interested in that process please check out this link.

Once I had the images digitized, I imported them into Aperture and began to play. Man, I tell you, if I had Aperture back when I was shooting nothing but film, things would be different.

Working with film in Aperture is amazing. The level of control you can achieve with Aperture’s adjustment sliders is eons beyond what can be done in a darkroom. Think of it this way--in a darkroom you can control the following: exposure, three color filters (if you are doing color), dodging and burning, and maybe some color toning if you want to get those nasty chemicals out.

In Aperture, the possibilities are nearly endless. For negative images that I digitized with my D100 I was forced to move them into Photoshop to do the inversion from negative to positive, but this only took a second, and wouldn’t be necessary with a full-res scan in the future.

I really love using the shadow and highlight sliders to open the images up. The vignette tool is sort of a joke for Holga users as the camera already has a serious vignette going on, but a great tool to have in the box nonetheless. What’s more is that with Aperture I can easily spot and patch certain areas of the image where dust may have fallen, and I can quickly crop out anything I don’t want.

Sure, I know, I’ve done this all before with my digital images, but working with film and a Holga and Aperture has really turned up the creative energy for me. It has brought me back to basics, and forced me to think like a real photographer again. The investment in equipment is nearly zero. A few more dollars spent on film and processing, and you are on your way. Shooting with the Holga and working up the images in Aperture is such a wonderful combination, I wish I had thought of it sooner.

After seeing a few of my Holga images come out of the printer I started thinking that I should shoot with the Holga exclusively. For the price of one DSLR I could get about a years supply of film, and plenty more Holgas! But then reality set in. I will probably continue to shoot Holga, and add some of the images to my portfolio, but I will always be a digital shooter, no doubt!

For more info about shooting Holga, be sure to check out this great site, and if you would like to see a few more of my recent Holgaimages, check out my Photostream on flickr.com.