Holga 35mm mod

A few years back when I used to shoot way more photos than I do now I was really into experimenting with my Holga camera. For those of you who are not familiar with Holgas, it’s basically an all plastic camera (even the lens) that shoots on medium format film and often creates interesting and characteristic photos. I figured out this mod for the camera so that you could shoot normal film in it. Here’s what you have to do:

• Get some thin rubber bands, a few peices of foam rubber (I took left over padding from a helmet), a completetly opaque (non transparent) piece of plastic or similar and some sticky tape.
• Wrap some rubber bands around each end of the film spool to create a narrower space for the film to be rolled up on.
• Cut some foam rubber to size so it holds the regular film canister in place in it’s compartment. The thinner piece of foam rubber is optional. I just found it to help keep the canister in place even better.
• Use the opaque material and sticky tape to cover the little window on the camera back. The normal 35mm film does not have the protective backing like medium format film, so any light from there would damage the film.
• Insert your film canister. Make sure the film will wind up properly on the spool. Put the camera back on and shoot away. Remember to turn 35 “clicks” on the film winding knob between each photo. It’s usually enough. Do a few less of you want the shots to slightly overlap — it’s a pretty cool effect.

NOTE! There is no rewind function on this. So when you’ve finished the roll of film you will need to enter a completely blacked out room to unload the film and manually wind it back into the canister.
When developing, remember to tell the people at the lab to NOT cut the film since the frames are oddly sized.

Here are 2 shots of what the resulting photos can be like. Sorry about the shitty quality. I only had the old prints I made ages ago and I had to photograph them with my camera as I don’t have a scanner.

Product mods

The other day I got sent a link to this german site called Leichtsinn, which is a weight-weenie site mostly dedicated to bmx products. The main story on there now features a modified version of the Simple stem, the System. He’s done a really good job of it and it looks way more tech and way less “simple”. It’s cool to see anyway and I hope it works well in it’s modified state.

The fact of the matter is that during the design stages of that stem I actually had a version that had just about those exact same cutouts, but we decided to go for the more clean, straight forward look.