I had originally intended to take my new Argoflex 75 for a spin around downtown Toledo… then I discovered that it had a stuck shutter. So, since I had my heart set on a photo walk, I loaded up the Holga and took it out over my lunch break, instead.
I’d never tried using the rectangular mask for the Holga; up until this photo walk, I’d only used either of my Holgas with the square mask. One thing that threw me off was having to remember that my photos would be vertical, not horizontal. I forgot several times. Sometimes, it totally screwed up the composition — but not often, since the viewfinder is apparently more of a general suggestion as to the composition of the actual photo (i.e. the actual lens is considerably wider of an angle than the viewfinder would lead one to believe).
I also learned that — surprise! — focusing to infinity with the Holga is pointless. I should just stop using the infinity focus on any of my lo-fi / box / toy cameras, since it always comes out unfocused. Half of the roll was either poorly composed (vertical, oops) or out-of-focus due to me having focused to infinity.
I did find a few places I’m going to have to visit again, like the Manos community garden and a couple of murals that my unfortunate focus and composition issues failed to do justice on this roll.
Definitely enjoying getting out into downtown, getting away from my normal “test roll” repeatable compositions, and discovering that downtown really isn’t a scary place to walk alone — especially not in broad daylight.
