Let's go do some photographing in Joshua Tree National Park with a Holga Toy Film Camera!

Here are our Holga Adventures of getting unique imagery of the Joshua Tree Wilderness from a day run to do some photographing in Joshua Tree National Park with a Holga Toy Film Camera. Beforehand, I purchased the camera from B&H Photo for $69 and bought three rolls of black & white film ($8 ea.) at the same time. I have not shot photographs using film in many years, so this is definitely outside my comfort zone.

The Holga 120 GCFN Camera

The Holga camera uses medium format 120 mm film – either color or black & white; and you can shoot in a rectangular (16 images) or square format (12 images). I shot in the square format. There are only two apertures – f/11 (day) or f/8 (shade, indoors, night), and the shutter speed is 1/100 second. The Holga 120 GCFN has a glass optical fixed 60 mm lens. The ISO is based upon the film that you use. You can also double exposure your shots, and I experimented with that. All together, I received 35 processed images out of 36.

This camera is in reality a plastic toy, and it is hard for me to load the film. Also, while shooting, you have no idea of how the photos will look until you get them developed and receive them back. Developing the film is expensive, $90 for the three rolls of 12 black & white images, with both 5″x5″ prints and digital downloads.

Known issues with the Holga camera are you often get an unmanaged vignette, focusing is by zone (estimated length), and you may get light flares on images. I put gaffer tape around the camera seams to reduce the light that comes into the camera.

The Journey

The drive to Joshua Tree National Park from San Diego is two-and-a-half hours, and I left my house around 9:00 am. Got to the city of Joshua Tree outside the park, filled up with gas, and bought a sandwich and a beer for my lunch stop in the park. It was a busy Sunday and waited 15-minutes or so to get into the park with my National Parks Adventure Pass.

Joshua Tree National Park

Once I got to the park, I stopped at one of the scenic pullouts, grabbed a camp chair and had a sandwich and a cold beer! After I finished my lunch, I started photographing some scenes in front of me of Joshua Trees stretching for miles. I took landscape shots, and shots of Joshua Trees and cacti at different distances to test my understanding of the rude focusing system. For the most part, the focus was not too far off for a toy camera.

Joshua Tree National Park is a regular visit for me, and I know where many of the landmark attractions are. I drove to several different locations and stopped for short hikes to find the shots that I wanted to experiment with. Because of the bright sunlight, it was not always easy to find shots that would not be washed out. Despite this, I found scenes that worked well.

Another photography trick I tried with the Holga camera is double exposure. I did a couple different double exposure shots, and they turned out well, it was a great experiment.

Barker Dam

Stopped at the Cholla Cactus Garden, Jumbled Rocks, and Skull Rock. I explored some dirt trails with my 4WD and waited until an hour before dusk and headed to Barker Dam to get some nice reflection photos. This was a longer hike than my others earlier, but almost flat, so I made good time to the lake with sufficient light still available. Plus, I was on my last few photos of the roll. I think the last photos at the lake turned out really well.

I had to hike back to the truck as the sun was setting. Next, I made it to the truck and was heading to the exit and saw a spectacular sunset, stopped to take photos and then started my journey home.

The Results

I must say, I was pleasantly pleased with the results. With the difficulty of film loading, and my thinking I exposed the whole roll of film did not happen. The focus was decent, the vignette gives it a unique look, the light leaks were manageable, I was able to get the framing I wanted, and the double exposure shots gave a whole other look.

On my trip it was a very bright day, so some of the day images were overexposed and the late evening shots were underexposed at the fixed settings – day: (1/100 sec, f/11), night: (1/100 sec, f/8), It took four days to receive the digital images and ten days to get the printed images back. Going forward, I may only order the digital images and print selected edited photos instead of the ones directly from the camera.

Despite all the issues, I have some cool and interesting looking photos! I edited the digital versions of the images in Adobe Lightroom, but did not crop them; and I am posting those. The Holga 120 will not be an everyday camera for me, but there will be some cases where it would be fun to take it out and shoot some more rolls of film!