By Charles McNally

5 February 2007

Made in China, the Holga features a 60mm lens, takes pictures on medium format film, and is made almost entirely of plastic. There are differing opinions on this camera, but I don't want to get into that debate. I want to saw one apart.

Yes, that's right. We are going to saw it apart.

One nice thing about the Holga is that it's so inexpensive. That lets me buy one to shoot film with and one to throw at skunks when I get cornered walking around at night. So I bought an extra Holga with the intention of figuring out a way

to mount the lens on my Canon 350d.

I can hear you thinking, "Why would you defile the integrity of your digital camera with this horrible piece of plastic?" Because it adds a wonderful analog distortion to digital pictures. Also, it lets me test out my Holga shots with my Canon before I shoot with film. Besides, it's just nifty!

Mounting the Holga lens on a digital body wasn't entirely my idea. Other people have done it before. My recipe is probably a bit harder to make and use than the others, but it leaves you with a Holga lens with extreme macro capabilities. To make this digital Holga conversion you'll need:

1. A Holga camera (preferably an extra).

2. Super Glue (epoxy might work better, but I'm impatient).

3. A small amount of light-proof flexible material (I used the

black plastic bag from a box of photo paper).

4. About a foot of memory wire.

5. A body cap for your DSLR.

6. Some electrical tape.

You'll also need some tools: scissors, a saw, a drill with a grinding bit, and a small file with rough and smooth sides.

First, remove and set aside the Holga's screw-on lens mount. To do this, unscrew the lens mount from the body and take the screw out that stops the lens from turning all the way off the body. Once the lens is removed, put the camera back together. It's easier to hold that way while sawing.

Take the small plastic ring and file it down shorter so that it only has four grooves on the outside. I don't think it matters which end you file, I had to figure out the height by trial and error after I'd already glued it so I ended up filing the outside (or the top side) off.

Next, take the body cap for your DSLR and drill out a hole about an inch in diameter right in the middle of it using the drill. Then, Super Glue the plastic ring to the outside of the body cap.

Warning: Super Glue fogs things up. This means glass, lenses, mirrors, etc. Be sure to glue the plastic parts far away from your camera, and make sure you let it dry completely before getting it anywhere near the lens.

Clamp the bits with the glue down, or set something heavy on them, and we'll get back to them in a bit.

Now we need to make a bellows. Take the memory wire and clamp it or tie it to a tube about 1/4" to 1/2" wide. Wrap it around the tube until it holds somewhat of a conical shape, like a funnel. The smallest funnel end should be just big enough to wrap around the part sticking out of the front of the Holga lens. The largest end of the funnel should fit snugly into the lens mounting ring.

Cut a piece of the light-proof material to wrap around the cone. You want the bellows to be about 2 inches long when it's fully extended and you want a tiny bit of extra material to tape down around the edges of the top and bottom loops of wire. Wrap the material around the cone and tape it down, but not too heavily. If you use too much tape, the little bellows will become too bulky and will not fit. Use just enough tape to keep it together.

Using electrical tape (you could use glue later, once you get everything fitting correctly) fit the bellows down into the ring you glued to the body cap.

There are little plastic pieces in the lens that keep it from screwing in past a certain point. This can mess up your focus. It's pretty easy to snap them off with a pair of needle-nose pliers. I also used a heated paper clip to get as much of the plastic off as possible.

There's one final thing we need to change. The ring around the outside (with the grooves on the inside) is too deep. In order to be able to properly focus to infinity, you must file down the sides. To get an idea of how much to take off, pry the small, flat, plastic focus indicator piece off the outside of the lens (it's the piece with the person/family/group/mountain illustrations on it) and look at the groove it was sitting in. You want to file the whole outer ring down until this groove is gone. The other option here is to very gently use the saw to take off that much of the plastic, but be careful not to hurt the rest of the lens, which sticks out further than our cut-off line.

At this point you will have to tweak the memory wire a little and use tape judiciously, but the lens should fit into the top of the memory wire cone pretty easily and should be snug enough to stay in on its own.

As a finishing touch, I punched a hole in the Holga lens cap, which creates a bold vignette if you shoot with it on. Finally, be sure to clean this lens contraption out before you put it on your DSLR to avoid getting dust on the CCD.

Now go shooting! Experiment with different shutter speeds to get different effects. I found that exposing way below what my camera's meter thinks it needs gives me more vignette and is often a better exposure than the recommended one.

Because of the construction of the bellows, the lens is small enough to be screwed directly on the mounting ring to focus like any other Holga. But we have the added option of opening the bellows and using the extreme macro mode.

Best of all, since the entire thing collapses very small, I can stick it in my pocket when I go out shooting as an alternative to my nicer, normal lens.

Other cameras might have different focus lengths and depths. I tested on only a Canon 350d. You might want to do a little research on your camera and play around with different lens focusing depths for your lens before you start hacking.

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