Use Your Holga with 135

We all know that normal Holgas take 120 film, which you either have to develop yourself (and mess it up if your me) or send it off to an expensive lab. But it is actually very easy to temporarily convert it to take 135 film without buying the back! So let's get started.

You will need:

• Your Holga120 (mines the GCFN)
• A used 120 spool (I don't know why I put two in the photo)
  
• Electrical tape (gaffer tape will also work, but it leaves sticky gunk)
• Bits of foam
• Rubber bands (the thick ones work well)
• A roll of film (I know this one is already developed, it was completely over-exposed so I put it in a canister for tests like this)
  

Step One: Open the back of your holga. You will need either the 6x6 or 6x4.5 mask if you want to get the images printed normally.


Step Two: Get the spool and wrap the rubber bands around either end to leave a gap that is big enough the let the film through.



Step Three: Attach the film leader to the spool with tape.


Step Four: To make the 135 mask, get some black card stock (this is 160g) and cut out a square that's about 63mm square, then in the middle cut out a gap that is exactly 36mm wide and either 24mm or 36mm high (depending whether you want the sprockettes exposed).


Step Five: Place the spool in the right hand side, like loading the 120 film.


Step Six: Place the canister in the left had side and support the top and bottom with the foam. Layers of thick card might work, too.


Step Seven: Because 135 has no backing, you will need to block off the window with the electrical tape. I have only done one layer hear, but feel free to do more.


Also block it off on the inside for maximum light-proofing.


Step Eight: Close it all up and wind the film on a turn and a half and your all set. For even more security, you may wish to seal all round the edges with tape.


When you have taken a shot, wind the film on 21 clicks, if you want to try with wider shots, calculate yourself how many clicks you'll need. It helps to use a piece of paper or something.

What do the results look like? Take a look for your self.

Kapsa: Brazil's Secret Camera

A couple of weeks ago I was given an old, 120 camera spay painted entirely gold; don't ask why. But anyway, I cleaned it all up with white spirit and washing up liquid and did a pretty good job of getting all the paint off. It looked like one of the later Kodak Brownies, but had a little logo of some kind and the words "INDUSTRIA BRASILEIRA": Made in Brazil on the top. It was getting more intriguing. On the front, under the lens, it had big sliver letters spelling out "KAPSA" (Brazilians seem to like their capital letters). So I did a little Google search and came up with very little; things like the "Korean American Pharmacy Student Association" and an Arabian dish made from chicken and rice. With the general search being a bitter disappointment, I moved on to other things. I had a gander at Flickr and found a handful of people who still use them.

I thought to myself "that can't be all there is on the internet!" and had another look at the camera. Then I noticed that on the metal bit around the lens was the peculiar word "VASCROMAT", again in block caps. Crossing my fingers, hopping I found something relevant. It was a hollow victory when the 75 results came back 0.49 seconds later; they were all in Portuguese! And most were just telling you how much they were worth. I did manage to find the most important information. The shutter speed. It is apparently 1/100. Which means that I have to use 160 ISO film. Which unfortunately does not want to be found easily. So rather than wasting my life hunting film in the vast planes of eCommerce websites, I decided to use 400 ISO that was stopped down to 200 with an ND 2 filter.

The camera has a little window on the inside as a mask for the incoming light. It it no bigger than an inch square, so I could just get some ND lighting gel. You can buy a whole sheet for the same price as a regular glass filter, but I only want a tiny square. That is where a little help from my friends come is. I know a woman who is a TV production designer and she said that she could have a word with a lighting technician who would have some ND gels. So until then I'm stuck with 400 ISO colour negative film. I did read about red scaling colour film some time ago and remembers something about you having to adjust it exposure by a couple of stops. I looked it up again and indeed, the celluloid is ND 2-3 so I just did that with some 35mm with the canister blue-taced in upside down where the new spool would normally go and taped the leader to the take up spool and I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

Image by Rodrigo Moraes