After a major disaster with the first roll (taken indoors), I burned a roll of Optima 100 film on the Holga WPC (wide pinhole camera) earlier today before an afternoon session at the Irish pub in Boat Quay. Seems that I’m slightly better at using it outdoors eh? I forgot to bring along the 6×12 mask, so I ended up using the 6×9 but pretty glad I did so, as it allowed me to take 8 test shots instead of 6.
Sir: How well made is the Holga WPC? Put in other terms, about how many rolls do you think you can put thru it before you have mechanical problems? Thanks for an opinion, Gene
@Gene : Sorry I don’t think I am able to answer your question. The WPC is probably built not much different from the normal Holgas and since they are considered ‘toy’ plastic cameras … it’s really hard to really say how long it can last before the mechanical stuffs break down. One thing though … the ‘shutter’ mechanism seems to work differently from the normal Holgas. The normal Holgas uses a spring (read : fragile) to control the opening/closing of the shutter but the WPC seems to need just something to push the ‘shutter’ open to reveal the pinhole. This makes me think that it will should last longer before the spring fails. Since you asked, I opened up the WPC and saw two springs. They will ‘pull back’ the ‘shutter’ once you release the shutter release button. The springs do look pretty sturdy and since the WPC doesn’t have a shutter speed, even if the springs loses their tension in the future … it won’t really affect the performance. Hope this helps. Cheers!