Filmtown: Holga and Kodak BW400CN
Coming Home to Filmtown Series by Josh Root
This month, we are looking at the darling of the art-nerd set: the plastic fantastic medium format Holga. Originally designed in the 80’s as a “camera for the masses” in China, it later gained in popularity with art photographers around the world who enjoyed the “artsy” photographs the quirky camera is able to take. In this column, we will be pairing the Holga with Kodak’s BW400CN, a C-41 (color process) print film. BW400CN is Kodak’s third generation chromogenic film. It is a black and white film that is designed to be processed in C-41 color print film chemicals.
The Camera: Holga 120 (120S/120N/120SF/120FN/120CFN)
Sterotypical Holga Artsy-Fartsy Image
The Holga 120N, $28, is a medium format camera made in China. Its body and lens are plastic. Newer production cameras have 6×6 and 6×4.5 inserts. Older production cameras just have the 6×4.5 insert, which was removed for 6×6 shooting. Focus is manual “guesstimation” via four distance icons on the lens barrel (person, 3 people, large group of people or a mountain). There are two aperture selections: sunny and partially sunny (f/8 and f/11 though some claim f/11 & f/13) and one spring operated shutter speed of 1/100 (plus bulb). Production quality is spotty at best. Light leaks through most every seam and crack. Vignetting is pronounced, particularly when using the 6×6 format. The lens may or may not focus properly. The shutter may or may not operate at the stated 1/100 speed. Heck, due to their bad design, some Holga models don’t even have two useable apertures. The larger aperture is on an arm that swings in behind the lens when you click the sunny/cloudy switch. On some models, this arm is behind a smaller aperture that is permanently attached to the back of the lens. It’s like having a large picture window installed behind a wall with a porthole window in it. The picture window doesn’t do you any good since you can still only see what the porthole shows.
The story goes that the Holga was created in 1981 out of the need for a “camera for the masses” so that working-class Chinese could record family portraits and other events. 120 film was the most plentiful film in the early 1980’s, a fact that was never fully explained to me. Perhaps it was because China spent so many years as a closed society that 35mm roll film didn’t make it over there until the mid 80’s. The Holga had a few successful years as a Chinese version of Kodak’s Brownie, but was swiftly relegated to obscurity by the previously mentioned 35mm cameras.
By the time that happened, the camera had gained attention outside of China as an “artsy” way to photograph, in the way that people like to juxtapose a beautiful flower growing in a trash pile. Art photographers grew to love this cheap plastic camera as a way of thumbing their noses at the ever growing must-buy-the-newest-fastest-sharpest-fanciest-everything mindset in photography. Sure, the marketing teams of Canon and Nikon were introducing people to the world of autofocus and matrix metering. But why bother with that when you can just set your $20 camera to “partially cloudy + three people” and shoot away.
Romantic Holga shot
Listening to people talk about Holga images is a lot like listening to a rangefinder nut talk about Leica lenses. Words like “glow” and “magical” tend to creep into the conversation. The fact is that due to the light leaks, lack of film flatness, low tech plastic lens, and overall junk construction, Holga images do have a “look” to them. Low-tech and random, a Holga doesn’t record the scene around it as much as it records what the image might have looked like in some person’s mind. Most likely that person is a drunk sailor squinting to try and keep the world from spinning so much.
Holga “factory” versions:
- Holga 120S – The original Holga. Fixed shutter speed, adjustable focus, plastic lens, ineffective adjustable f-stop switch, hot shoe, and 6×4.5 film mask.
- Holga 120N, $28 – Updated version with the same plastic lens and ineffective adjustable f-stop. Adds a tripod mount, bulb exposure, an easier-to-move film counter window switch, and an additional 6×6 film mask.
- Holga 120SF – A standard Holga 120S, with a flash.
- Holga 120FN, $40 – A Holga 120N with a flash.
- Holga 120CFN, $47 – A Holga 120FN with a 4 color flash.
There are also a couple variations on these versions that have glass lenses instead of plastic ones. There have also been a few 35mm cameras released under the Holga nameplate. In my mind, neither are what I think of when “Holga” is brought up. So I am ignoring them for this article. For what it’s worth, I also think the color flash is a silly gimmick that becomes annoying fast. That’s more personal opinion. My general suggestion for a Holga model is to purchase the 120N. Bulb mode is very useful as is the tripod mount. Since Holgas have a hot shoe, there really isn’t any reason to have a crappy built-in flash.
Taped up Holga
As with many cheap toys that become hip with the art-crowd, a cottage industry has sprung up around modifying Holgas and giving them different capabilities. Some of these modifications include:
- Replacing the whole lens with a pinhole lens: Pinholga
- Replacing the lens with a glass lens
- Modification to permit panoramic shooting on the entire surface of 35mm film (including sprocket holes)
- Adding a Polaroid back to a Holga: Holgaroid (less popular with the demise of Polaroid film)
- Mounting a fisheye add-on lens to the front of the Holga’s lens for a circular fisheye image
The list of modifications really goes on and on. A simple Google search for “Holga mods” will yield more than you ever wanted to know. Quite frankly, I’m not a fan of many of them. Replacing or changing the lens eliminates half of what makes the camera so lovable in the first place. If I want a pinhole camera, there are better ways to get one. If I want to use a medium format with a better lens, there are tons of low price folders and TLRs out there. However, there are a few simple things I do to a Holga:
- Gaffers tape for light leaks (at least the major ones)
- Gaffers tape over the film path to prevent scratches
- Use a folded piece of film box under the film spool (not the take up spool) to help with film flatness and tightness of the take up spool winding.
I have also taken the time to fix the useless aperture problem on a Holga or two. Quite frankly, I’m not sure it is worth the trouble.
Cardboard under film spool
In Use
There really isn’t much to using a Holga. I tend to bring a light meter with me and hope to get close to the correct exposure. Setting exposure is as simple as looking up at the sky and deciding if it’s sunny or partly cloudy. Then setting the appropriate setting on the switch. With 1/100 as your only shutter speed and two (or perhaps one) usable apertures, you don’t have a lot of adjustment leeway. Your most important choice will be in what film you use. Due to the lack of usable exposure combinations, I highly suggest using print film rather than slide film. The wider latitude of print film will serve you well when your exposure isn’t as accurate as you might want. As for ISO, I have found 400 to be a good starting point for Holga photography. This will give you a decent exposure on a bright overcast day as well as in the shade on a sunny day. If you know you are going to be shooting in full sun, ISO 100 is probably going to be your best option. I suppose you could look into using a ND filter with a higher speed film. I have never done that myself, preferring to keep things as simple as possible when using a camera this basic.
Focusing is a matter of matching the little icon up with the distance you are focusing at. The general consensus is that the icon distances are approximately as follows:
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Lonely Man = 3ft
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Three’s a Company = 4-6ft
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It’s a party = 8-10ft
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Head for the hills = 18 ft-infinity
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One Holga modification that I have never tried, but that might be worth the trouble is removing the existing lens stop and fashioning a new one allowing focussing down to 2ft. Not a huge difference, but I have found some instances where that extra foot would have really helped.
The shutter button is one of the least smooth I have ever used. It takes more pressure than you think to get it started. Once you do, you find that you are jiggling the camera little bit because you pressed so hard. This is another one of those instances where manufacturing defects can really come into play. Just because my Holgas are bad in this regard doesn’t mean yours will be as well. For those who have never used a Holga, be aware that it sounds like the shutter clicks twice, once pressing the button down and once when it pops back up. Be assured that it doesn’t, that second click is just the spring resetting the shutter plate back into place. One thing that will happen though is that your flash will fire twice if you are using a flash in the hotshoe. The shutter closes the flash triggering circuit on both the firing and the resetting of the shutter.
Good example of random Holga weirdness
Film advance is another rough aspect of the Holga. If you have taken my suggestion and added a bit of folded cardboard under the film spool you have likely increased friction to a point where it isn’t that easy to turn the knurled knob to get the film to advance. Be aware that there are no stops for the film wind know. You have to look in the little red window on the back and stop winding when you reach the next printed number on the 120 film backing. Otherwise you can just wind up the whole roll of film. Try to stop winding with the number in the same place every time. This will help you keep frame spacing even as much as possible.
The Verdict
This is just about as much fun as you can have with a $30 camera. The images are so random, with various light leaks and warped film plane effects, that the “Christmas morning” effect of opening up that envelope at the photo lab is greatly exaggerated. You really never know exactly what you are going to get. For digital photographers, this can be a really neat and liberating feeling. We spend so much time these days “chimping” to make sure that we got the shot we wanted that we miss some of the random magic that can happen from just taking photos and seeing what you end up with. For film photographers, the Holga can be a cool way to see just how neat it is to sit there with that big 6×6 piece of film on the light table or enlarger. Medium format is truly one of the neatest formats to shoot film in. It is more portable than large format gear and easier to use, but has a significant advantage over 35mm when enlarging.
The images are just like I talked about earlier—soft, dreamy, random, in/out of focus across the film plane, and covered with light leaks and various scratches (you can never totally fix either problem no matter how much tape you use). Quite frankly, I find them to be very enjoyable. Holga images are a reminder that not everything in photography needs to be about exact representation of our world. Think of a Holga like a watercolor painting. You know what is being shown in the painting but you also know that the scene didn’t really look like that when it happened. Given that my memory of life is hazy at best, sometimes I find the Holga style of images to be more like the way I remember things than regular photographs. Then again, maybe I just fell and hit my head a lot as a child.
Could have used closer focus
The Film: Kodak BW400CN
The Kodak BW400CN, 120, is Kodak’s third generation chromogenic film. You can read some technical details about what chromogenic film is here, but the short answer is that it is a black and white film that is designed to be processed in C-41 color print film chemicals. C-41 B&W films first started showing up in the early 90’s. Ilford was the first out of the gate with XP1. XP1 was quickly followed by XP2 Super and Kodak’s T400CN. May photographers found these to be an easy way to get black and white images without having to deal with processing black and white film. They were also a boon for event photographers who needed to be able to make large numbers of reprints or photographers who did not have access to a traditional darkroom and relied on minilabs to do their printing for them.
Over the years Kodak’s C-41 B&W films have had a few things in common:
- Tight grain (for a 400 speed film)
- Good shadow and highlight detail
- Good exposure latitude
These 3 points made the films fairly successful. The main problem was that the film base had the typical C-41 orange tint to it, making printing in a traditional darkroom more difficult. The orange base was not strong enough to ensure neutral prints automatically from C-41 minilab machines. Kodak attempted to fix that issue by releasing B+W 400, a film with a more dense orange base that was aimed at photographers who have their work printed at minilabs. This was eventually replaced with Porta BW400 and in 2004 both T400CN and Porta BW400 were discontinued and replaced with the current BW400CN film. Some say that BW400CN is just Porta 400BW with a new name. While I have no proof of this being true, the fact that the base of BW400CN is the more dense orange intended for minilab lends credence to this theory, as does the fact that fewer and fewer people are using film these days. Those who are are less likely to be operating their own darkroom.
Josh Root
In Use
While some technical details of Kodak’s C-41 B&W films have changed over the past decade or so, the main advantages of the films have not. It is still a tightly grained 400 speed film with good exposure latitude and shadow/highlight detail. Users have reported good results with pushing the film up to 800/1200 ISO and some have even gone as far as 1600. Though like most cases when you are making something do what it isn’t designed to do, there is a loss in quality after a point. For me, that point is ISO 800. To be honest, I rarely shoot this film at anything other than it’s rated speed.
One very interesting and often overlooked feature of BW400CN is how little it is affected by reciprocity failure. No exposure compensation is needed for exposures up to 120 seconds. Compare this to other popular ISO 400 films such as Kodak’s Tmax 400—exposure compensation needed starting at 1 second (1/3 stop), and Kodak’s Tri-X 400—exposure compensation needed starting at 1 second (1 stop). This is handy for pinhole photographers, landscape photographers, and anyone who enoys using very long exposure times to get their desired image.
There was a time when you could get Kodak C-41 B&W films in 35mm, 120, 220, and sheet film sizes. The digital revolution changed all that and like many current films, Kodak BW400CN is not available in many formats these days. Currently BW400CN is available in:
Due to the fact that this is a C-41 process film, there really isn’t much to suggest for processing options. Traditional B&W films offer all sorts of possibility with different developers and development times/temperatures. If you want that sort of thing, you shouldn’t be screwing with C-41 film anyway. I have heard of photographers who have cross processed BW400CN in E-6 (color transparency) chemicals. Apparently you have to overexpose the film a couple of stops and even then the results are pretty comical with low contrast and a serious green tint and not useful as a real B&W transparency film. Feel free to give it a try and report the results in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
Cute babies improve any shot
Minilab printing with BW400CN is much better than Kodak’s past films. Most labs that put any effort into their work can make virtually tone neutral prints. If you take your prints to Wal-Mart or some other giant chain that doesn’t pay its people enough to care (or replenish its chemicals enough) you may have a harder time of it. Traditional darkroom printing, as has always been the case with Kodak’s C-41 B&W films, is more difficult than with normal B&W films. The orange base just makes things harder. I have see some nice prints come out of traditional darkrooms using BW400CN negatives. A lot more work goes into making those prints and most photographers I know do not bother trying to print BW400CN negatives at home.
BW400CN scans just fine by all accounts. The orange base has to be dealt with, but it is a minor issue. One nice thing about scanning BW400CN is that, unlike traditional B&W films, Nikon’s ICE technology will work just fine. This is a big advantage to photographers using Nikon scanners. The Fuji Frontier/Noritsu scans that I have had made during minilab development all seem to be fine as well. Though “fine” in this instance isn’t a ringing endorsement, minilab scans aren’t that great so there isn’t much we can learn from them. They are very easy and cheap however, and a lot of photographers rely on them for rough proofing and quick Internet posting.
The Verdict
I’m a fan of C-41 B&W films. They are a easy way for B&W lovers to make the images they enjoy without having to deal with the cost (taking it to a lab) or mess (developing yourself) of developing traditional B&W films. All the typical “pluses” that are listed for the Kodak C-41 B&W films ring true for BW400CN: grain is tight, exposure latitude is good, and highlight/shadow detail is decent. This film makes very nice B&W images with none of the typical hassle of traditional B&W development. It’s a very good film for digital photographers who want to stick a toe back in the film waters (or try it out for the first time) or for film photographers who have given up on traditional wet darkroom work.
Josh Root
The one drawback in my mind is that BW400CN doesn’t really have anything that makes it “special” as a B&W film. For example, when we think of films likeTri-X, Tmax 3200, and Tech-Pan, most film photographers can picture in their head the style of image that these films produce. I’m not talking about subject matter here, but more about things like grain and tonality. BW400CN is a very nice film, but in many ways it does not have a real personality. Since half of what is fun about using film is the different personalities that the films have, this is a downside to BW400CN. That said, it is still a film I find myself using more often than not.
All Together Now
At $30 for the Holga and with no messy darkroom work needed for development of BW400CN, this combo is a great way for a photographer to try out B&W medium format film photography. There is something truly fun about using a camera where the results are completely random and a little bit out of your control. No, you shouldn’t rely on your Holga to do your wedding work for you (despite the fact that I have wedding images here), but you should consider getting one to throw in your bag just as an extra bit of fun. Think of it as a sacrifice to the photography gods. You give up some measure of control over your images, they will give you something magical and fun in return.
This Month’s Contest
We want our dedicated film using members to post their own experiences on the Filmtown articles. So, to encourage participation in this article series, we are going to give away a basic Holga or a five roll pack of Kodak BW400CN (35mm or 120) to two of the users who leave comments on this page. How to enter? Just click “add a comment” at the bottom of the page and post a suggestion, personal experience, or review about using either a Holga or Kodak BW400CN. Or you can post a photo taken with the camera or film (one photo per person please). We’ll pick one film and one camera post and give away the prizes. Super easy.
Where to Buy
Adorama has all the available Holga artsy-fartsy models to pair with Kodak BW400CN film.
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Original text and images ©2008 Josh Root.
Article revised February 2009.
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, November 07, 2008; 12:40 P.M. 
