Friday, May 24, 2013

New Toy: Holga Lens for DSLR

We all have fun playing with the fun filters on Instagram and similar programs, so when, during my daily immersion in the internet one day, I found a plastic Holga lens to fit on a DSLR, I thought it might be a fun thing to play with.

Blue Holga Lens on Nikon D5100

I got the blue version :) because I love blue and because I didn’t really care if it looked a little nutty on my camera (there is a black version, as well as lots of other colors!). It’s a toy lens after all!

Before I got it, I read some reviews, so I was prepared to mess around with manual settings to be able to actually take pictures.  (Thanks, Shoot Fly Shoot, for teaching me how to mess with those!) 

taken wiht plastic Holga lens; 1/25 sec, ISO 400
Puppy the cat in the yard

taken with plastic Holga lens; 1/25 sec, ISO 500
Shadow the dog

taken with plastic Holga lens; 1/25 sec, ISO 500
Flowering bush

taken with plastic Holga lens; 1/50 sec, ISO 800
Siberian Wallflowers

The opening on the camera side of the lens is the tiniest hole ever, and the whole thing is plastic, so there are no aperture settings.  You adjust the brightness or darkness of the picture with shutter speed and ISO settings, and even then, it pretty much only works outside. :)  The day I took these pictures was sort of overcast. I can’t wait to get to try it when there’s some cool bright spots and shadows.

Here are some pictures where I was changing up the settings.

taken with plastic Holga lens; 1/50 sec, ISO 800
1/50 sec, ISO 800

taken with plastic Holga lens; 1/15 sec, ISO 800
1/15 sec, ISO 800

taken with plastic Holga lens; 1/50 sec, ISO 800
1/50 sec, ISO 800

taken with plastic Holga lens; 1/25 sec, ISO 800
1/25 sec, ISO  800

There’s a “focus ring” on the lens…I put it in quotes because it’s pretty primitive :) and really, the point of this lens is that it’s a toy lens, so I wasn’t too worried if the pictures were really in focus or not. I did notice when I took some flower close-ups it looked better when I had the lens set to “portrait” or whatever on the focus ring. The whole thing’s plastic, so I did have to be really careful when I was adjusting anything, for fear that it might pop off the camera! :)

I definitely want to keep playing with this lens and having fun with it. What do you think? Like the pictures? Would you want to play around with a lens like this?

Bigger pictures on Flickr.

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