Some Scanned Negatives from my BumbleBee Holga
Really, a good portion of the fun of a Holga is modifying it to be your own. This particular one I got some time ago when Freestyle Photo ran a sale on a couple colored versions. This was before Holgas closed and then reopened. I got this one in “mustard”
Right off the bat I ditch the clips and use velcro to hold the back on. Of course you need to remove the internal F8 aperture ring. With this one instead of filling aperture (sunny/cloudy) hole and drilling a correct aperture, instead I just taped a piece of orange gel over the opening.
I tested my first roll through it and thought the images were soft, not like normal Holga-soft but bad soft. I wrote “Focus!” on the back (and “Pro” on the front 🙂 ) and tried another roll. Still soft. I pulled the front off again, made sure the gel was clean and re-glued the lens in. Still not happy with the images.
Then I remembered I had this Holga lens floating around so I put it on and ran a couple more rolls through it. Success! I’m pleased with the results of this current incarnation and I’ll definitely stick with it. It totally looks like a bumble bee!




