It's Holga time!

We met this morning. She arrived together with her friends the Actionsampler and the Lomo Smena.


She is tender and sweet, light as a feather (only 200 grams!) yet she has a character of her own.

Her name is Holga, and she is all dressed in red (with a bit of white, that is). She is supposedly a very limited type of girl, as all her friends come in one color only.

Her passport tells me she is a 120 GCFN lightweight camera that excites the professionals. She turns ordinary photos into little works of art. She is supposed to come with a flash, but don't believe what they tell you. She does not come with a flash, she comes with 4 (FOUR!) flashes. The rotating flash wheel can change the color of the flash to four different positions: red, yellow, blue and standard white. A flash for every day of the week (I am told Holga does not do ordinary stuff, including 7-day weeks). A red flash for intense and hot moments, a blue flash for the icecold friend we all have, yellow for all photos in Spring (and Summer, Autumn and Winter if you ask me) and plain white for when you try to be ordinary with your Holga (trust me, even if you try, it won't work - a man (or woman) can not be average with his (or her) Holga!).

This Holga has 'added value' as she boasts a standard tripod mount, a bulb exposure selector for extra long exposures and comes with two frames to take pictures in 6x4.5 cm or 6x6 cm size.

It will be hard for me to say goodbye to her after we just met and the love seems to be mutual. But as my apartment is small, and my family of cameras is growing fast, I am looking for a good home for her. If you promise you will take care of her and send me a snapshot when she has respectfully aged, then she will be yours for only 49 EUR. That includes a shoulderstrap and the two frame masks. Hell, I'll trow in a free professional slide film (Fujichrome Provia 100F) for those wicked cross-processed colors!





(btw, the guys at Lomo are in the meantime looking for a good home for her black sisters -there are thousands of them and not as rare as this beauty- and do so for 70 EUR excl. shipping, don't ask me why!!!).

The love for analog

I love photography. I love my digital Canon camera that takes crisp photos of life around me. However, sometimes real life gains from being blurred a bit. Romanticized. That is when I use a nice 'analog' camera. There is nothing sweeter than a photo taken with a Diana or a Holga. The outcome is never known. Sometimes unexpectedly good. Sometimes not so good. The imperfections of the end result are charming. Everyone can be an artist. Light leaks are allowed. Out of focus encouraged.

Unfortunately, the Diana and Holga, and other cameras originally intended as "toy cameras", have become highly sought after. They have been reproduced as well by the folks at lomography. They have been good at creating a hype. Unfortunately, someone needs to pay for that hype. Why pay loads for a reproduction if you can get the real stuff for the same or less.

I have been hunting down some especially nice ones. Some of them are even 'clones', meaning they work and look like e.g. a Diana, but were produced in the sixties under a different name. It is these cameras that collectors are perhaps even more excited about than when they find a pristine Diana.

I am sharing some of my treasures here. The love for analog is not limited to music. You miss that 'warm' feeling of an old vinyl record? I do too. And sometimes I miss the 'warm' feeling of a photo that is truly alive.

I believe that the folks at lomography are charging too much for their replica cameras. True, they put them in nice boxes and have a really great website. But after all, it is about keeping the real stuff affordable. The cameras I'll post are all for sale, though I intend to start using them myself in the future, should they remain unsold. As every camera has its own character, every photo taken by every camera will be different. Therefore, I can never have enough of them. And I will never get enough of them!