Post II -- Holga

About a week ago, I was searching the internet for my first analog camera and stumbled upon Lomography.com. It's nice website, but God! Those prices. No thank you.

So I searched and read some more. The 'Holga' camera kept appearing, so I decided to look into that.

It seems to take some beautiful pictures. There are loads of photos by Holgas on both Lomography.com and Flickr.com that you can take a look at. I went straight on eBay and bought a Holga 120GFN, thinking the glass lens was of better quality. 

GFN means the it has a glass-lens (G) and a flash (F). The 'N' stands for 'New', because this is an improved version of the originial Holga, which bears the name 'Holga S'.

Other Holgas are the 'N' (plastic lens), 'FN' (plastic lens and a flash) and CFN (plastic lens, COLOUR flash with 4 different colours) and CFGN (Glass lens, colour flash).

I think it cost around $40 incl. shipping, which i understand is a tad expensive. I've read about people picking them up for $15-25 in retail stores in the US, but I don't have access to that, and I don't think those had a flash like the Holga I bought (which adds a bit to the price).

Now, I am still spending loads of time searching the internet and learning, and I haven't received the Holga yet. But I've discovered that there seems to be a difference between the plastic lens (N) and glass lens (GN) Holga. The plastic one appears to be more 'dreamy', which actually is the effect I want. A lot of photos look the same, but I saw a higher quantity of 'sharp' photos with the Holga 120GN when browsing Lomography.com's photo archive, even though both Holgas show both very 'sharp' and 'dreamy' photos.

I also read that the plastic lens gets scratched up more easily. Some think that just adds to the photo's charm, but that's taking it too far for me. So maybe the Holga GFN was the right decision after all.

We'll see what happens.

P

Post I -- a blog

So I just created this blog five seconds ago.

Why? 

I thought some might be interested in reading how someone who knows nothing about photography is starting to develop an interest in analog photography.

I have a cheap DSLR which i think takes wonderful pictures. But they are so clean and sharp and all that. It looks nice, but it can look even nicer:

I want my photographs to have that 'vintage'-look. Yes, it's quite hipster-ish, but I don't care. It's just so beautiful.

Yes, you can make digital pictures look vintage-ish, but I want the real deal. It want it to be genuine -- real. Special.

There is just something about analog photography. The surprise I imagine you get when getting a film processed, the excitement. You can't just take picture after picture, select the one you like the most and delete the rest. Well, not if you're on a budget anyways.

Analog photography is expensive. Yes, I have some money to spend on it, but I don't want to! I am aiming to spend as little as much, while still taking beautiful pictures.

But there is an upside to the expensiveness. You are really careful with your motives and the whole process of taking a picture -- each picture is special and cared-for. Selected, thought about. It's just completely different from digital photography!

Cameras, film, guides, forums, technical stuff, developing, processing, motives, price??

I don't know much about any of it. I still don't have an analog camera.

But! I will be posting my findings and results here, and hopefully, they will be a help to other beginners. And if I'm lucky, I'll get some help too.

P