Holga or other "toy" camera

[cyrus]

Poll: do you own a Holga or other similar toy camera? I have been playing around with an old Box brownie, an Argus 75 and a Lomo. Light leaks, vignetting etc - sure (the Lomo though has a decent glass lens) but you still end up with some interesting shots!

[John Kasaian]

My latest is a Brownie Reflex 127 format

[Ash]

I was bought a toy 35mm camera with a "color lens" by a friend of mine as a joke gift for my birthday last august

[Walter Calahan]

I've got too many toys. Grin.

[scrichton]

I bought a holga to prove to someone I could make a very typical stylised photo.. as normally seen from them.

Then I cut it into pieces. Then bought a good camera that with bad exposure, a cardboard vignette and some tender loving general misuse creates the same effect if required.

[big_ben_blue]

I got a few - two Diana's (Holga's grandmother so to speak), the standard Kokak cardboard box Brownie, a Lubitel 166 TLR, and I am pretty sure there are some more floating around which I just have forgotten right now.

[Jon Shiu]

Have a Holga, but prefer my Diana camera, makes beautiful pictures.

Jon

[Brian Vuillemenot]

I don't mess with these things- life is too short for toy cameras!

[Mark Sawyer]

They're ALL toy cameras! :)

[Bob Jones]

If you cut up a Guinness can you have black aluminum in which you can make a pinhole. Mount it on a lensboard and stick it on your Linhof. You get an optic, and you get to drink the Guinness.

Life could be worse.

[nehartmannn]

3 DIANA's .... ofcourse..... and using them

[cyrus]

Have a Holga, but prefer my Diana camera, makes beautiful pictures.

Jon


WOW! How much would you have to pay using a 'real' camera to get similar shots? :p

[Jeremy Moore]

Have a Holga, but prefer my Diana camera, makes beautiful pictures.

Jon

Jon, I would disagree and say you make the beautiful images. Quite stunning work.

[Robert Hughes]

The decision to use a toy camera is likely an extension of the pictorialist vrs F/64 debate of years past, which finds its common ground in the LF formats. Not only can the LF photographer create razor sharp, high definition imagery to rival the most pixel obsessed digicam fiend, but with a simple change of lens and f/stop can capture the creamy, dreamy, soft focus look so beloved by the bokeh set. I have a 35mm toy camera that creates wonderfully out-of-focus nuttiness, but also have a lens for my 4x5 that, wide open, can create a similar (and controllable) effect.

Of course, the toy camera can't create sharp pictures to save its life, it's a one trick pony. But for what it does (make out of focus shots with distorted perspective), it can do so flawlessly.

[Joe Smigiel]

..Not only can the LF photographer create razor sharp, high definition imagery to rival the most pixel obsessed digicam fiend...

That's a scary thought. Isn't it the other way around, sorta ?

Joe

[Michael Graves]

I've got an old Moskva V that I take out about once a month. Does that count?

[Donald Qualls]

I've got an Annie 44 (4x4 on 127), basically a 127 version of a Diana, as well as two Brownie Hawkeye Flash, a Brownie Bullseye, an Ansco Pioneer 620, and an Ansco Speedex Jr. -- all well within the usual "toy camera" parameters, and only the Annie actually makes crappy images...

[Steve Clark]

Hey Donald!
I also have an Ansco " Pioneer " a rugged metal " beauty" from the past. Do you think they really intended for them to be that ugly, or was that just the way it worked out when the dust settled? Recently, there was a "Pioneer" that was married to a 4x5 back, for sale on E-Bay. I can`t imagine what might have been on thier minds with that project!

[cyrus]

I've got an old Moskva V that I take out about once a month. Does that count?

Hmmm...a bit soft but focused and no vignetting.
Nope, doesn't count. Try again with a crappier camera!

(I always thought that the Russian cameras were underestimated. They did what they were supposed to do and did it well: cheap camera for the masses.)

[Michael Graves]

Hmmm...a bit soft but focused and no vignetting.
Nope, doesn't count. Try again with a crappier camera!

(I always thought that the Russian cameras were underestimated. They did what they were supposed to do and did it well: cheap camera for the masses.)

Damn! Guess that leaves out the Voightlander Bessa, too, then.

[cyrus]

Damn! Guess that leaves out the Voightlander Bessa, too, then.

YES! Why on earth would you consider that to be a toy? It was a great camera for its time! A classic folder! (and very useful for making panoramic shots - after a shot, wind the film just enough to slightly overlap the next shot on the film)

[Donald Qualls]

Hey Donald!
I also have an Ansco " Pioneer " a rugged metal " beauty" from the past. Do you think they really intended for them to be that ugly, or was that just the way it worked out when the dust settled? Recently, there was a "Pioneer" that was married to a 4x5 back, for sale on E-Bay. I can`t imagine what might have been on thier minds with that project!

Your Pioneer must be a different model with the same name; the Pioneer 620 has metal only where plastic flatly can't do the job (and there are a fair number of metal parts -- springs, film spool pins, the shutter disk, etc., but the body is molded plastic throughout). BTW, there was also a Pioneer 616, which I believe was the first on the scene; both catered to the same folks who would have bought the Kodak Brownie Six-20 Flash (or Flash Six-20, depending when it was made) a decade or two earlier

Hard to imagine how you'd mate a Pioneer like mine (with curved film plane) to a 4x5 back and get images that were anything like in focus. Kodak reused the Brownie name for about sixty years -- perhaps Ansco did similar things over their long history?

[Andrew O'Neill]

I have a holga. Piece of crap but pretty cool snap shots.

[rivermandan]

Jon, I would disagree and say you make the beautiful images. Quite stunning work.

I second that. Those were some of the nicest shots I've seen come out of a holga.