Holgaroid: A Polaroid Back for your Holga - A User Review
written by fuzztone04
on September 24th, 2009
, 13 comments
(13 votes)
image from freestylephoto
The Holgaroid is a Polaroid-type back that fits nicely onto your 120 Holga. It can accommodate both Polaroid Type 80 and Type 100 films. The back has a set of rollers inside of it to pop and activate the developing chemicals in the pack film. The Holgaroid comes with a fold down viewfinder, a corrective diopter (much like the Diana+ Instant back) and a dark slide (which makes the back light tight, in case you want to switch mid-pack to shoot 120 again). With the back on the Holga, the camera to me takes on a large-format camera look to it. It is also a little more labor intensive then shooting on roll film; you have to remember to remove the lens cap, then remove the dark slide, take the shot and then pull the instant film sheet out. It makes you slow down just enough to think about what you’re doing.
The back gives the camera a little more weight, which feels good in your hands…not like the light plastic we’re used to with the Holga. The viewfinder to me is a little useless, and you can’t flip it up when using a flash either. As mentioned earlier the dark slide is very useful in keeping your film light tight in the back or if you wanted to pull the back off and load some good ol’ 120 film into the camera.
Although Polaroid has stopped making the pack films that can fit inside this back, Fuji is still making 100 ISO Black and White, Color and also 3200 ISO Black and White films which are readily available. Also, places like PolaPremium still sell original Polaroid stock, and if all goes well The Impossible Project will also help analog photographers find a cheap instant film.
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