Somewhere in Iowa. Probably Hempstead, Iowa.

More rolls through film cameras, or more work with digital? I’m having trouble deciding. Well, maybe I’m not.

“It’s endless,

it’s mapless,

no compass,

no North Star.”

Through the rain.

Three in a row from my last Holga roll. This was the first roll I shot without the 6×6 mask, so there’s some nice bleedover onto the edges of the film. Interesting to note that the exposures are so different. The sun was going down, so hypothetically they should get darker from left to right. Since the Holga shutter mechanism is a disc with a hole and a spring, it’s not really surprising that these are all over the place.

Holga, Fuji Pro 800Z.

“Increasing focus
Telescoping lines and forms
The tiny details
Come home come home come home.”

Yes, it’s been a while. Everything from this post is still true, with the addition of twenty-six weeks of not really shooting. So here’s some geometry.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX

It’s a cipher.

This is another from my first-ever Holga roll. In addition to setting the counter to 645 (vertical rectangles 6×4.5cm) instead of 6×6 and therefore overlapping exposures, this one was accidentally set to bulb, resulting in blurring and overexposure. I think the effect is interesting, though unintentional. Isn’t that the point?

Holga, XP2.

(Possessive, not plural).

“Be sure the fortune that you seek / is the fortune that you need.”

Holga, XP2.

So I’ve been away for a while.

In the time since “The 92 Megapixel Holga,” I’ve received two degrees, accepted a faraway job offer, lived at four addresses in two (admittedly contiguous) time zones, moved halfway across a relatively large country, and started a new job (in roughly chronological order). I’ve put enough miles on my car to change the oil twice (something like 12,000, I think).

While I’d love to say I’ve documented all of those experiences with thousands of images, I haven’t. I have some, but really not as many as I should. I’ve put a few rolls through my Holga and had a few outings with the digital setup, perhaps just enough to know that I’ve lost some of my feel for it. Oh well. I’m a little more settled now, a little more comfortable, so I should probably get back to work. So.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 G DX (which has been permanently affixed to my D200 since I got it), window light.

(Actually, 92.3)

I finally got back the first roll of film from my Holga. I always order my film “develop only,” then scan my negatives and see what’s worth printing. Since I very rarely print anything, it saves me a lot of money. As I detailed in my previous post, I managed to do an extremely good job of messing up the film by overlapping all of the exposures. I was hoping that at least one of the overlapped images would be something at least interesting, and I think it worked out. I tried to take the same shot twice, first using the “f/11″ setting and then using the “f/8.” Because of my winding error, it didn’t really work out as planned. I do still think it’s interesting, though.

The first time I scanned this image, I didn’t bother to change the scan resolution. I had left it set at 2800 dpi, which produced scans from 35mm frames in the neighborhood of 10 megapixels, which was a good compromise between giant files and printable resolution. When I scanned this frame at 2800 dpi (which is somewhat cropped from the original), I ended up with a 92 megapixel image (or, to be exact, 92,390,540 pixels). While this is wonderful in theory, it meant a file of more than 227 MB, so unwieldy that it crashed Lightroom on my Macbook Pro (1536 MB RAM and a dual-core 2.0 ghz processor) when I tried to spot correct a bit of dust. It is also utterly pointless, as the Holga lens is in no way capable of resolving the level of detail that would reward this level of resolution. In spite of this, I plan on bragging about this regularly. The next time someone shooting with a D300s and an 18-55 kit lens takes a break from toggling through the auto modes to ask me about my camera, I can just say it’s 92 megapixels. (Or I can be nice – I’m not as mean as I claim to be).

Holga 120N overlapping exposure, Ilford XP2 Super.

While anxiously awaiting my UPS package (apparently two day air means five days?), I read up on all sorts of Holga info. It seemed like everyone who has tried one has made some sort of silly mistake on his/her first roll, from loading the film wrong to leaving the lens cap on to exposing all of the film when the camera’s back fell off (which I couldn’t really imagine until I held one myself).

After my Holga finally arrived, I resolved not to make any of the silly mistakes I had read about, loaded a roll of XP2, and started shooting. Holgas can shoot in one of two formats: 6×6 or 6×4.5. 120 film has a paper backing with counting numbers in different locations which allow the photographer to advance the film the correct distance. Since the 6×6 images are 1.5cm wider, they require a little more winding between images (and thus only get 12 images to a roll instead of 645′s 16). When I had finished shooting my first roll, I tried to advance the film the rest of the way so I could take it out. As I kept turning the film advance, the numbers went way past 12 to 13, 14, and all the way to 16. I had left the counter set to 645, so all of my images overlapped into one continuous mess. I decided to have the film developed anyway, but I’m not expecting much from it. I guess we’ll see in a few days.

At least now I’ve made my official first Holga mistake.

I need to do more shooting, and I think I’m going to try cross-processing more slide film. Among other things, I have some Provia 400F on my desk (expired September 2004) which should be interesting. This is from another roll of the same film.

Minolta XD5, Fuji Provia 400F (exp. 2004).