Why are they so expensive?

[Jersey Vic]

Why are Dianas, holgas, etc so expensive? They honestly look like something you would get for popping a balloon at the fair. They most certainly aren't worth $25 for a Holga, or $50 for a Diana...
They're just plastic...

To recoup the costs associated with R & D ?

Please don't get me wrong-a Holga really is a crappily made camera.
An original Diana is much much better made.
But no one else is making anything like them.

Regarding: Luck, Chance, etc : I know people that DO shoot them like that AND send the film out to labs. God bless anything good that comes from that.
Me: Often I walk around with my Holga, some filters, several films and a Sekonic 508 meter. Other times I walk around with my Holga and 2 dogs.
The dogs work better.

 

[benjiboy]

It's the profit that makes them expensive.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

What it boils down to is that the Holga is a study in imperfection. Personally, I find it very rewarding to walk around with the Holga and burn film, because it completely eliminates the 'technical' elements of making photographs. It helps me 'see' really well, it helps me focus on what's important, and what's important to me is not lens resolution, it is not how well the lens handles contrast, but it is how well the photograph conveys the inspiration and emotion I had in my system at the time I made the exposure. To me, calculating exposures, metering, thinking about rise, tilt, swing, and Scheimpflug principle is just complicating matters in connecting with the subject matter.
Pinhole does the same for me, but it's more difficult, because with my ZeroImage camera there is no way to see what I will actually get.
Don't get me wrong, though... I am able to have this rush of sensation using my Mamiya and Hasselblad cameras too. It's a completely different experience, and even though I enjoy myself, I frankly don't enjoy it as much. Call me weird...
- Thomas

 

[iamzip]

It's all relative. Simply put, a Holga is the least expensive new medium format camera you can buy. It's probably less expensive than most used MF equipment. In fact, it's probably one of the cheapest cameras you can buy, period. You can blow as much as maybe $10 on a disposable, does $25 for a reusable MF camera seem like that much more? Think of all the ways you can blow $25 these days - a cheap meal, even going for coffee with a few friends, it's remarbkably easy to spend $25 on what seems like nothing. Then think about spending $25 on a remarkable little camera that has converted so many to film, brought so many others back to film, and has the potential to make you very happy with some unique, interesting and remarkable images.

You say it's too expensive, I say it's a bargain.

 

[HMFriedman]

Think of how much it must cost to gas up the boat that brings a load of them from China.

(You're not paying for the camera, it's really about the packaging and delivery.)

 

[JBrunner]

The price of anything is simply what the market will bear. No more, no less. The market supports $28 Holgas, so they are $28, regardless of what they are made of, how they are made, or what kind of photograph they take.

 

[ElrodCod]

I would love to find a Diana or a Holga at a local thrift store. All I've found around here are the Time cameras that look like SLRs. Apparently the thrift store clerks think they are SLRs, because they price them at $10-20.

I took one apart for a pinhole project & found chunks of steel glued in the body to give it that SLR heft.

 

[Markok765]

This just in: Holgas (the 120N, cheapest model) is now $28 at Freestyle.

$27 at B&H! A year or 2 ago, I bought the same holga 120N for $20!

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

I'm so glad my Brownie cost me only 5$. Oh, maybe 10 with the flashbulb holder, I don't remember...

 

[Akki14]

I think what you're seeing at Freestyle and B&H is called inflation, Marko. I got my original Holga for $17 as part of a bulk buy at my high school 8 years ago (eesh i'm getting old). Keeping in mind inflation, it's not a bad deal or a very significant price rise. The dianas, on the other hand, are kind of specialist reproductions of a camera fetching $100 or more on ebay due to demand. Like mentioned before it's a supply and demand thing. I like my holga and compared to most new cameras, it's pretty cheap. Even the second hand vintage cameras can be a bit more (excluding brownies. Brownies are fixed focus, Holgas do have some focusing ability, it's just difficult to judge it accurately) and in the end nothing is quite like a Holga.

 

[IloveTLRs]

... I won a contest recently with one of my Holga shots, and the 2nd place winner was furious that my "POS" contraption placed higher than his $4000 digital setup.

Gotta love it

Think of how much it must cost to gas up the boat that brings a load of them from China.

Hahahah

Here in Japan the base model is $70. The full kit with all the add-on doodads is over $120 I think. People pay those prices though. They also buy rebranded Superia at $6 a roll :rolleyes: I bought mine at Calumet in the US. $20 and it works just fine.

On the topic of price, just because something is expensive doesn't mean it's good- that's especially true in this day and age. Many high-profile camera makers have let their QA go down the drain.