Holga 120N Medium Format Film Camera Plastic Lens Black Body

Product Information

This twin lens reflex style camera aims to give you classic medium-format squares with the distinct Holga style – light leaks, vignettes and that old-school feel. Due to its small size, every shot is a long exposure – from 1 second in sunlight to several hours on a dark night.

It all began in Hong Kong in the early 1980s when the first Holgas were designed by a man named Lee Ting-mo. The Holga accomplishes this by being the most perfect storm of bad design and accidental ingenuity in photography.The Holga 120GCFN is similar to the basic flash Holga 120FN model with the addition of built in flash but also has a spinning colour filter wheel in front of the flash. Holgas are a brand of ‘toy’ camera first made in Hong Kong in the 1980s, similar to the Diana cameras that were really popular a few years back (although those originally came out in the 1960s). The intensifying downpour of rain and my contemplative mood got me trying a couple of ‘creative’ shots - neither of which worked the way I’d intended if I’m honest… For the shot above I forget now what my ‘creative’ concept was aside from - hey look! Holgas don’t exactly have a whole lot of settings to play with, which is part of what attracted me to them in the first place.

First – hence the note stuck to the back of the Holga I played with – is that you can shoot your whole roll of film with the lens cap on and not realise until it’s too late. The kit includes a manual that details the camera's idiosyncrasies, as well as a roll of black tape for taping up light leaks, though the manual notes that many Holga devotees regard light leaks as part of the camera's signature style.I love that there are only 12 exposures on each roll of film (120 film), so it makes each exposure even more precious. The camera has a hot shoe adapter for attaching a simple flash - unleash your nighttime creativity and take photos in the dark! You can try to shield the light with a hat or something else, but ultimately you may need re-compose the scene.