How To Make Your Holga Lens Mountable To Your SLR Camera (EOS,Nikon,Sony, ETC.)
I originally wrote this article for litratista, a photo/magazine blog that I ran a couple years ago. The blog article has been getting a lot of hits, but I am going to switch the whole website off and relocating the most valuable articles here in Howcast.
You Will Need
- 1 EOS body cap
- 1 EOS lens cap
- 1 Holga lens
- 1 Empty 35mm film canister
- 1 Scissors, xacto knife and some super glue
- 1 Electric drill with 1 in. hole bit, and a 3/16 in. drill bit
- Dremmel with sanding attachment
I have to admit, I am tired of using Photoshop to create a pseudo Holga shot using javascripts found in flickr.com so I decided to just go ahead and hack my Holga CFN and give it a second life since all it has been doing is gathering dust. My plan—to hack the hell out of my holga and turn it into an EOS lens for my Canon 20D.
Step 1: Holgalicious
The process was really simple and it took me about three hours to finish the project from thinking up how to do it to finally getting the vignetting right. The good thing about this experimental home made lens is that I can focus from 5 inches away to infinity.
Step 2: Hole in 1
Drill a 1” hole in your EOS body cap (don’t forget to wear rotective gear!). Make sure it’s centered:
Step 3: Holga Decapitated
Unscrew your Holga lens from its body (counter clockwise till it pops right off) and use a dremmel to file out the sides untill you are left with a lens that resembles a pancake lens.
Without extending the actual lens barrel, you won’t be able to focus anything closer than 10 feet or so. So we need something to extend it a few millimeters away from the focal plane.
Step 4: Lens Barrel
Then we cut an empty film canister with a pair of scissors and an xacto knife to make the lens barrel.
Step 5: Light Leaks. YEY!
I then wrapped it around the inner lensbarrel of the Holga Lens. This will now act as an extension tube that will allow your holga lens to have a working distance of 5 inches or less.
Be careful that you don’t make this new lensbarrel too long or else it will hit your mirror. the advisable length for the hole thing is about 3/4 in – 1 in max. anyways, the reason why I used a white one to enable a little bit of light leaks.
Step 6: Adjust the Diameter to fit
You then need to adjust the diameter of your body cap hole. Using a dremel widen the hole enough for the new extended lens barrel to fit into it snugly, but not too tight that you cannot adjust the focusing.
Step 7: Classic Vignetting
Your next step would be drilling a 3/16 in. hole into your lens cap. what for? this is for your classic vignetting.
Now, this will be a loose part of your Holga lens because if you glue it onto your lens, you wont be able to control the amount and the “random look” of your vignettes—making your shots more authentic looking.
Step 8: Assemble
Now fit them all together like in the photos below:
Step 9: Mount
Mount the body cap part to your camera like you would a regular lens:
I usually crop my shots to create a square, making sure that my vignettes are spaced out nicely.
There are a few photoshop javascript snippets out there that will enable you to emulate cross processed images. You can go look around and google for actions, custom curves and JS scripts for this purpose.
Step 11: Thanks!
Thanks for viewing my tutorial and dont forget to leave comments here as well as in flickr.
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