Toy cameras

reub2000 · Mar 16, 2007

In photography class, there is a kid ("brother" in Mr. Ware's terminology) who like to use a Holga. I was looking at the 6x6 negative on the light table, and clearly visible is the vignetting of the cheap lens, and a couple of the frames are overlapping. He says that he like the uncertainty and lack of precision in shooting a Holga. He never knowns what he is going to get. It's a curious fact that someone would choose to shoot a very cheap camera when they could shoot something better. It seems to me that their relinquishing control of their photographs, and letting the camera make the pictures. Or is it just about letting go and shooting casually without the bulk of a monorail or a fast zoom lens?

Ryuji · Mar 16, 2007

I think it's about shifting focus from technicality to the conceptual aspect. Who cares if the focus and exposure are off, as long as the interesting idea is clearly captured in the image. Relinquishing control is probably one way to say it, but I think it's more of combination of what I said above and the distinct look of the lo-fi optics.

Vignetting is an afterthought because the same thing can be done in darkroom or photoshop. There's nothing uniquely toy camera there.

Pinholemaster · Mar 16, 2007

"It seems to me that their relinquishing control of their photographs, and letting the camera make the pictures."

I believe the opposite.

I love using toy cameras because I have to rely less on the machine telling me how it wants to work, and more on what my heart and instincts tell me need to be in a photograph.

jstraw · Mar 16, 2007

I find a challenge in making good pictures that take into account and use the qualities that my Holga imposes as defaults.

Valerie · Mar 16, 2007

My "main" cameras are a Rolleiflex and Holga. Totally different styles for totally different "feelings". I am not at all technical, so the Holga lets me relax and just go with the flow. Developing the film is like opening Christmas presents--did I get what I want? Or did I get something totally unexpected, yet totally wonderful? (Or did I get crap).

Paul. · Mar 16, 2007

Slightly up market my Lubitel 166 has a glass lens and an inabilaty to get both halfs of the neg sharp. We have produced some interesting pictures together.
I have a Hasselblad for when I need it, I have a Lubitel for when I want it.
May I direct users of these cameras to the f63 thread in the lounge, 'cause if you use a toy camera you aint sweatiny the small stuff.
Regards Paul.

Jim Chinn · Mar 16, 2007

All toy cameras provide certain specific look. Diana and Daina clones have a look, Holga and its variations have a look. Once you use one of these cameras for awhile you begin to know a little bit about how the scene you are photographing will look when printed. In that regards a toy camera is no different then using any expensive camera. you choose a camera, film and format because you want a specific look to your final print.

The appeal of a toy camera (toy camera to me means a Diana or Holga or similar clone) is it is as simple as it gets next to a pinhole camera. Load the film, point and shoot. The only option with a Holga is the primitive focus scale since the adjustable aperture does not do anything. Personally I try to eliminate most of the unpredictable variables such as light leaks and concentrate on the look provided by the key component of any toy camera which is the cheap, usually plastic lens.

I think as we become more and more inundated with hyper-sharp focus, hyper saturated color images from family snaps, to advertising to the current in vogue gallery work, the more unique and captivating such simple images become. I don't think it is an accident that we see growing interest in wet plate, daguerrotype, pinhole, zone plate and toy cameras. Call it the new Romanticism or Pictorialism in photography. As with any area of art, when one style in a medium begins to grow or dominate, usually something quite contrarian comes along to counterbalance and in denounce it.

Lee Shively · Mar 16, 2007

My first camera was a Kodak Hawkeye Brownie. Waist-level finder, no aperture or shutter control, big negative. It wasn't considered a toy back then, it was just a camera. It was always a bit of a thrill to see the prints when my parents picked them up at the drug store. You never knew for sure what you were going to get and the expectation was part of the enjoyment of using that camera. After using more advanced equipment for almost 35 years, I pretty much know exactly what I'm going to get before I unload the film from the camera. It's not boring but it is predictable. On the other hand, there's something to be said for serendipity. I can appreciate your friend's fascination with the Holga.

Silverhead · Mar 16, 2007

There are any number of reasons why toy camera photography can have such an enduring appeal. Some of them have already been listed here (nice comments, Jim Chinn!), but probably the best source would be Michelle Bates' excellent new book "Plastic Cameras: Toying With Creativity". There are images in there that you would never believe came out of a $22 camera.

Fairly recently, I did some publicity photos for some friends of mine who are an electronic music duo. We shot in digital, 35mm color film, 35mm cross-processed, and B&W Holga. They saw some useable stuff in the digital, liked the film, were intrigued by the cross-processed...and went absolutely bonkers over the Holga material. In fact, two of those images are what they chose to use in their newest promotional piece.

For me, it's the Holga's ability to produce detached(?), dream-like imagery that fascinates me. The fact that it's not razor sharp and spot-on is what separates it from everything else, and prevents its images from looking so rote and pedestrian. I remember one shot I took a couple of years ago of a guy lying on the beach in Malibu that I ended up cross-processing (it was Provia 400 120)...with a 35mm or a digital, it would have looked like a tourist-board shot. With the Holga, the soft focus and light leaks made it look like a surreal, almost post-nuclear artifact. (That's my opinion, anyway) True, toy cameras are not for every photographic situation, but when they're used in the right place at the right time, they can go over like gangbusters.

jstraw · Mar 16, 2007

Silverhead said:
For me, it's the Holga's ability to produce detached(?), dream-like imagery that fascinates me.

Bingo. I've referred to my Holga as my alien eye.

nicolai · Mar 17, 2007

reub2000 said:
It's a curious fact that someone would choose to shoot a very cheap camera when they could shoot something better.

Don't make the classic mistakes of equating price with quality and sharpness with goodness. Cheap doesn't automatically mean worse, and expensive doesn't automatically mean better. Sharp doesn't automatically mean good and soft doesn't automatically mean bad.

It's about picking the right tool to accomplish any given goal. Sometimes the right tool is a Hasselblad and sometimes it's a Holga. Different strokes for different folks.

Remember that we're in an aesthetic phase of photography whose basic parameters are still defined by Group f/64's manifesto. It's a period, like any other in art, we've just been in it for so long that we tend to forget. Photographers in the previous peroid of Pictorialism would probably have been just as confused by our general desire for sharpness as you seem to be by toy camera shooters' desire for blur, vignetting, and unpredictability. Unless you're painting by numbers--in which case you're trying to make somebody else's work instead of your own--there are no right and wrong answers here, only different tools for different jobs.

Brian Miller · Mar 17, 2007

Look at it this way: if the Holga gets stolen, who cares? Whip another one out of your backpack, and continue on. If you really want that Holga back, just kind of follow the thief, and look in trash cans along the way. If you don't find the Holga, there might be some interesting arrangements of trash to photograph.

Sparky · Mar 17, 2007

The way I see it - it's about QUALITY (see also: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). The Holga HAS quality. My multi-gazillion dollar Sinar setup does not. People pay the big bucks to remove quality from the picture. Subjective quality. Like taste... the way that an experience like going to Coney island has taste - whereas a stay at the four seasons does not. Taste. Flavor. Quality.

reub2000 · Mar 18, 2007

Many of these toy cameras are not produced as artistic tools, but as cameras that can be produced as cheaply as possible.

jstraw · Mar 18, 2007

reub2000 said:
Many of these toy cameras are not produced as artistic tools, but as cameras that can be produced as cheaply as possible.

No, *all* of them are. What's your point?

gr82bart · Mar 18, 2007

Man you mean all this time when I shoot with my expensive Hassey, it's art and when I shoot with my Holga, it's crap? If I only knew it was that easy to produce art.

Regards, Art.

jstraw · Mar 18, 2007

It's more astounding than that. Art can only be made with tools and materials that were produced for that purpose. Nothing made without them can be art.

nicolai · Mar 18, 2007

reub2000 said:
Many of these toy cameras are not produced as artistic tools, but as cameras that can be produced as cheaply as possible.

I have to ask: are you serious? Will you be insulting van Gogh next for not always painting with brushes?

reub2000 · Mar 18, 2007

Obviously you guys misinterpreted my last post. I was merely pointing out the fact that toy cameras are designed to be as cheap as possible. The fact that the effects of the cheapness are considered desirable is merely a coincidence.

No, *all* of them are.

Ahem

jstraw · Mar 18, 2007

reub2000 said:
The fact that the effects of the cheapness are considered desirable is merely a coincidence.

Again, what is your point?

That's like pointing out that the fact that a potato can be carved into a pretty good printing block is "merely a conicidence." It's a pretty banal observation.

I'm certain that I'm missing the point to your "Ahem" link.

reub2000 · Mar 18, 2007

I was responding to this comment:

The way I see it - it's about QUALITY (see also: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). The Holga HAS quality. My multi-gazillion dollar Sinar setup does not. People pay the big bucks to remove quality from the picture. Subjective quality. Like taste... the way that an experience like going to Coney island has taste - whereas a stay at the four seasons does not. Taste. Flavor. Quality.

jstraw · Mar 18, 2007

I didn't know that...but knowing that doesn't shed any light. Do you understand what that quote is getting at?

gr82bart · Mar 18, 2007

You guys remember that National Geographic documentary about the chimps in Africa using twigs to eats termites? The twigs, I am sure, were never meant by GAWD to be used by chimps in Africa to be poked into a termite hole for plucking the juicy little critters.

Anyway, I dunno where I'm going with this either. Other than I've got a bag of microwaved popcorn handy, 'cause this should be a good thread.

If I use the salad bowl, clearly designed for salad not popcorn, to hold my popcorn as I eat it, is that OK? I mean I know a popcorn holder, that is clearly designed to hold popcorn and I'm sure cost so much more too, plus it has all the built in qualities a good popcorn holder should, over a cheap salad bowl is all about letting myself go, isn't it? Live on the wild side I always say. How can I possibly have any control over my popcorn in a salad bowl?

I'm breaking some grand ethereal law, aren't I? Just want to make sure.

Regards, Art. (I think I'll drink my pop out of a bowl instead of a glass. Just because. A cheap one too.)

Sparky · Mar 18, 2007

It seems to me, that under certain circumstances, a dime makes a better screwdriver than a $50 Snap-On screwdriver designed expressly for the purpose. Use the tool that gives you the best result, however you choose to define that result.

Akki14 · Mar 21, 2007

I like the results my Box Brownies (which takes spankingly good 6x9cm negatives with no vignetting at all), Holgas (which don't always vignette, just to annoy me), and Ilford Sporti (which does vignette consistantly but only if I'm nice and feed it HP5 instead of cheap Fomapan 400). Other people I show my pictures to like the look too. Sometimes you need a non-photographer's eye to tell you what looks good and what is "perfect" vs "nice". One of my friends has expressly told me to use the toy cameras to photograph her wedding... and to not throw out ANY photos because then she'll end up with one picture that only I or my husband thinks looks good but she might like the others. I find the results from my Nikon SLR with built in light meter flat looking in comparison.
There's a reason why I have so many cameras and I use them all. They do all have their own kinds of images and I have a few duplicates in the way people buy extra backs for their hasselblads.

Plus there's the shooting with your heart and not your head (or your built-in computer in your camera)... I've always been quite good at taking nice photos without the technical stuff being right so using these toy cameras isn't much different to giving me an SLR at times. I like these toy cameras as my "point and shoots" as they give nicer looking images compared to actual point and shoot 35mm cameras.

It's also a nice introduction to medium format film without spending a fortune. It demystifies that format. I'm sure I've confused a group of girls when traveling on the London Underground and changing the film in one of my Brownies

Toy cameras

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