Holga Week 2025

A celebration of all things Holga. Annually, during the first week of October, photographers around the world shoot with their Holga cameras. Originally made in Hong Kong in 1981, the Holga is a plastic medium-format camera. Since its introduction, numerous variants have been developed. The Holga has plastic components, including the lens. Controls are simplistic with a single shutter speed and only an aperture setting for a sunny or cloudy scene. Focus is limited to four settings, near to far.

The camera is celebrated for the less-than-perfect images it produces.  Among its quirky traits, it is loved for the vignetting that is common, light leaks, and, in general, the happy accidents that come with shooting Holga cameras.

I own three Holga cameras. My original one is the 120S, a now discontinued model that produces 6x6 images. I then acquired the Holga-120WPC is a medium format based panoramic pinhole camera that captures images in 6x12. Last year, I purchased the Holga 135 BC (black corner). The 135BC is a 35mm camera from Holga released in about 2005 that produces a greater vignette effect.

This week, I combined the uniqueness of the Holga with the unusual qualities of Lomography film. I took pinhole pictures with Lomo Purple (psychedelic purple hues) and Color 92 (vintage color palette). Locations included a “haunted” graffiti-covered railroad bridge, a beach on the Lake Michigan shoreline. a church interior and a local sunset. The results should be interesting; come back and see!