# Shooting with a cheapo £16 Holga Lens on a dSLR



## editor (Apr 10, 2012)

Sticking a super cheap plastic, fixed-focus lens on your expensive camera may seem a mad thing to do, but some of the results look really interesting. 

This reviewer grabbed some quite moody shots with the lens stuck on an Olympus Pen m4/3 camera - the lens is also available for Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax and Panasonic cameras.

















More: http://www.ephotozine.com/article/holga-lens-hlw-op-review-16884


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## Hocus Eye. (Apr 10, 2012)

Editor may you be forgiven.


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## weltweit (Apr 10, 2012)

tbf some of the photos in the link are not half bad.

Perhaps all us lens obsessives are barking .....


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## editor (Apr 10, 2012)

Hocus Eye. said:


> Editor may you be forgiven.


Ah, I get it. You can only shoot good photos on good gear, eh?


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## editor (Apr 10, 2012)

Seeing as that site won't let me embed pics, here's one of them. Looks really good to me, with an intriguing 'different' quality.


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## weltweit (Apr 10, 2012)

Yes, Ed, that was one of them that I liked a lot.


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## weltweit (Apr 10, 2012)

I spend quite a bit of time on dpreview in the gear forums and you would not believe how many people are buying D800s and expensive lenses without any idea really of how to put a picture together. It is sometimes sad when you see people with the most expensive gear but obviously no idea what to do with it.


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## editor (Apr 11, 2012)

Some more examples here (on a Canon 60D):


http://www.flickr.com/photos/61648752@N04/6353771637/in/set-72157629200692313/


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## weltweit (Apr 11, 2012)

So, photographers take pictures, it is not just the gear ...

A friend who is a great photog imo sometimes uses a holga, and as usual his pics are great  sickening !!


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## editor (Apr 11, 2012)

Some fantastic pictures have been taken on shit cameras. Obviously you do need a great camera for many jobs (sports, poster sized landscapes etc), but great pics can still be captured on crappy gear.


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## weltweit (Apr 11, 2012)

editor said:


> Some fantastic pictures have been taken on shit cameras. Obviously you do need a great camera for many jobs (sports, poster sized landscapes etc), but great pics can still be captured on crappy gear.


Yes, but the emphasis I was trying to put on it was it is a good photographer that takes good pictures the gear is almost irrelevant.


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## FridgeMagnet (Apr 11, 2012)

I quite like the lens on my (film) Holga - when things work out, I can get some really nice results out of it. The main problems I have with it are (a) getting the damn thing to focus anywhere near what you want it to focus on, (b) the f13 aperture with fixed 1/125-ish shutter speed - yeah, really handy general purpose settings, those - and (c) that colour 120 film is prohibitively expensive to shoot in a toy camera, being not cheap to start with and costing as much or more to develop. Strikes me that attaching it to a DSLR would compensate for all of those to greater or lesser degree.


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## ViolentPanda (Apr 11, 2012)

editor said:


> Some more examples here (on a Canon 60D):
> 
> View attachment 18123
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/61648752@N04/6353771637/in/set-72157629200692313/


 
The vignetting on that one actually improves the composition.


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## Mr Smin (Apr 12, 2012)

It's so cheap that if you were looking for this kind of effect in advance, you could take photoshop out of your workflow and save more than £16 worth of time. I'm speculating - proper photographers feel free to correct me.


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## sim667 (Apr 16, 2012)

I might ask for one of those for my birthday, I've been known to shoot on holgas anyway




img002 by simbojono, on Flickr


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## fractionMan (Apr 21, 2012)

only £10.16 from here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GBP-HOLGA...ters_Lenses&hash=item1c262b955d#ht_601wt_1121 !


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## Belushi (Apr 22, 2012)

Friend had one of these on his Nikon at a barbeque yesterday, he was getting some great shots with it.


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## fractionMan (Apr 23, 2012)

Anyone used one of the holga attachments?


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## sim667 (Apr 30, 2012)

Mine arrived, not had a chance to test it out yet.


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## fractionMan (Apr 30, 2012)

Try it out and post some pics!

I'm gonna play with my 50mm f1.7 that cost 16p _less_ before I commit to a holga


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