The Holga WPC (Wide Pinhole Camera) is one of the camera I own that probably has only been out to play once or twice. As I had an appointment around noon in Chinatown, I decided to bring this wide baby some fun. I was a little worried because I’ve always screwed up exposures when shooting pinholes, and I am always too damn lazy to do some maths to calculate the exposure times. Oh well … again … I depended on luck and prayed all the way to the lab. Being one who hates to lug around a tripod, I had no choice but to bring one along for these shots.
The two rolls I did today turned out errr … okay or perhaps slightly okay. One first problem I realised when I collected the rolls from the lab … something was appearing on the right side of each and every frame! Something blurry and takes up about 3% space on the right of the frames! Damn! I thought my fat fingers were the culprit but I was also damn sure that using a cable release, there was no way my fingers could be hanging around in front of the camera! Oh no! So what happened?
Upon closer inspection, I realised a small piece of soft plastic sheet was stuck on the side of the pinhole. Not exactly in front of the hole itself, but on the outer ring of the pinhole area. Where did that come from? Aha! Then I remembered there was a thin plastic sheet that was covering the outing ring area, and I ripped it off when one side of it wasn’t sticking well. A little of that plastic sheet was caught between the parts and I didn’t completely remove it, thinking that little plastic piece … pretty far from the pinhole won’t cause any ‘damage’. 😛 I had to crop off a little on the sides to remove that ugly blur thing that appeared in all the shots. Grrrr!
These are the 6 shots from a roll of expired Ektachrome 100 …
The other roll was a roll of long expired Agfa Optima 100. The last few rolls of this same film turn out okay on some other cameras but it had a blue cast in this one. Well that ain’t too big a problem to me though. The guy at the lab told me ‘Ooops! One of the frame had a long scratch on it’ and was surprised when I told him ‘it’s okay … maybe it will make the photo look nicer!’ 😀
Getting only 6 shots outta a roll of 120 film on this camera ain’t too good a ‘toy’ to play with too often … so I’ll take another break before loading it again. 😛
haha.. wpc. u using it again. 😀
:O
Jim … ermm … you mean I should dump it? Hahaha! Yeah, I’ll probably use it once a year … to prevent wasting too much film.
I love the back alleys! Where is the place?
Jer, it’s somewhere in Chinatown. Nearer to Tg Pagar area.
You just reminded me I still have a roll of film stuck in the camera! 😛
What’s the exposure like? And how do you know it’s the next frame? Mine came without a manual. 😛
oic…I love to explore the back lanes of Club st, Ann Siang, Amoy st….nearest to my office! Easy for a quickie after work before rushing home.
BTW…where to do you get those Agfa or rare films?
Jer, lucky you. At least you can enjoy a quickie before going home. Hope your wife is not reading this and you get killed for the misunderstanding. lol.
Those Agfa were bundled together with some Diana cameras I bought from Lomography the other time.
nvr go visit me!!! how come i nvr go to the alley for quickie… since its so damn near my work place.. LOL
Well it was a Sunday and I was damn sure you were not working. Else I’d drop by with some yummies for you. 😛 As for the alleys for quickies … maybe he *wink* prefers Desker Rd. Muwahahaha!
Cyan, the exposures ranged from 12 seconds to about 20+ seconds. Hahaha. I just roughly base on the ‘guide’ behind the camera and added some 5 or more seconds to them. As for the frame count … you have to take a photo on the odd number frames. This means you shoot at frame 1 … then advance to frame 3 before taking the next photo. Of course the film mask inside and the ‘switch’ behind has to be set correctly before that. Quick go finish your roll!!!!