The p-Code Machine

I’ve been into photography for a while now, and my EOS 400D has served me very well. I’ve even dwelled into the realms of color management, which has become an interest of itself for me. Digital imaging technology really is amazing these days.

That said, I’ve always had a nagging feeling that I’ve missed something… Starting out with digital photography without ever having done film felt to me like having learnt the alphabet, while skipping the a. Don’t get me wrong, I still very much think digital technology (when compared to analog in the same class) is technically superior in all except possible some obscure corner cases. But does that mean film isn’t good for anything anymore? I think not!

A while back at Photokina 2008, there was a lomography stand, which I found interesting. They were selling Diana‘s there, I briefly considered buying one, but didn’t. Mainly because they were for medium format, which is really cool, but can be a pain to get the film developped in regular shops. There were of course 35mm adapters available, but that’s only a stopgap solution.

Somehow someone had the bright idea to slightly modernize the Holga 120 for 135 film, and tada the Holga 135 was born. One downside though, because of the the smaller film size, the black corners were gone, so they went and fixed that, and put a light mask in there, and called it the Holga 135BC.

So I went and bought the Holga 135BC from Rittz, for such a simple camera it’s fairly expensive, but that was to be expected, since it has become a cult icon. The 135 is relatively luxurious, as it can be mounted on a tripod, and has a regular frame couter window, common on 135 cameras. It even has two exposure modes: 1/100 second and bulb. A hot-shoe for external flash is present as well, and since it’s all mechnical you can pretty much put any flash on it, even relatively old high voltage ones. Did I already mention it’s fully mechanical and thus requires no batteries at all?

For now I’m trying as much different kinds of film as possible, and I’m having a blast. Preliminary results can be seen in my photos section, and there’s even a special Flickr group for this camera.