First things first. The image above was shot on my Holga, and I only manipulated digitally by way of turning it black & white and adding my copyright symbol. Otherwise, this is shown exactly as it was shot, with the image stretching its way across the film plain in a nice wide panoramic and covering the cogs right to the very edge of the film.
While there are other ladies such as Diana F+ (you’ll have to forgive me for bringing her up here on HOLGAblog…) that have masks meant to allow your image to spill over onto the film cogs or to expose a panoramic style short wide image, they don’t have a mask that will do both at once, and the cog exposure doesn’t quite make it to the edge of the film, leaving a small unexposed bar along the edge of each image. Being greedy and wanting to make a bigger, lovelier panoramic that included the cogs from edge to edge, I went to it by modifying my Jawz Holga to securely hold 35mm film. Yes, Holga does make a 35mm camera, but it doesn’t expose on the cogs (that I know of) – besides, I prefer the do-it-yourself method anyway!
First I made sure I had the square 12-exposure mask in my Holga. Using leftover 1/2-inch thick foam from a Pelican case, I cut a 1-inch by 1-inch square and hot-glued it into the bottom of the loading-roll side of the camera. I did the same on the top side, only I carved out a small indentation to hold the winder on top of the 35mm film canister. You don’t need anything else to hold the canister in place because the camera back presses against the canister itself, holding it there nice and tight. Then I used electrical tape to attach the leader to a 120 spool on the take-up side, making sure it lined up correctly with the canister so it stayed flush once I started winding the film. Before placing the back on the camera, I carefully covered the exposure-counter window with gaffers tape (electrical tape works as well, but might not stay on very well) so that it didn’t leak any light (well, any MORE light than my camera already leaked) onto my film.
The next task was to figure out how far I had to wind the spool between frames to make sure I wasn’t overlapping or wasting a lot of film between images. After some trial and error, I figured out the right amount. Using the front of the arrow on the winder, I turn it one and 1/4 turns (starting at 12:00, go around one full rotation, then keep going and stop at 9:00). That gave enough room to allow about 1/8-inch of space between frames, just enough to avoid overlapping but to allow the most number of images on each roll. In the end, I got about 24-26 shots per roll.
NOTE: Make sure when you aligning your subject in your viewfinder to consider the parallax-error between the finder and the lens, and also remember that you will not see anything from the top or the bottom of the field of view on the film, as 35mm film is not wide enough to reach the top or the bottom of the mask.
The nice thing about doing panoramics in a Holga in this fashion is that the film stretches across the ‘sweet spot’ where you’re most likely to get a sharper image – as we all know, Holga’s are renowned for their inconsistency when in comes to clarity and ‘perfection’. Give it a try! If you don’t like the results, rip out the foam and you can go right back to your 120 film without a problem.
You can check out some more of my panoramics at http://www.sheenairenephoto.com including cross-processed slide pano’s and other plastic endeavors.
Thanks for stopping by!
- Sheena
P.S. While writing this entry, I decided my next attempt will be exactly as above, but without the square mask to make an ultra super wide pano! I think it’ll take some work to get the film to stay taut, but I definitely think it’s worth a try! Oh, I’m going to get on that with my new pretty purple Holga right away!
