Holga?

Question: What is the difference between Lomography and Diana/Holga!?

Specifically, do the photographs of those two cameras show any difference!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Holga, well actually Diana, had a really crappy plastic lens!.
Not only was it unfocusible it had a hazy effect with lots of colour halos!.
Everything shot through it had the same soft focus effect of 1970s soft porn art shots!.
You can get some of the same effect by smearing a better lens with Vaseline petroleum jelly, but you wont get the same amount of chromatic aberration!.

Lomo on the other hand was a crap camera that had a fairly good lens!. Instead of plastic they used coated glass!.
The images can be better focused and don't have the same hazy look, but they show a different series of defects and distortions!.

With both of these cameras the point is that they produce defects that digital methods dont, wont, can't!.

One other big difference is the film size!. Lomo uses 35 mm film and Diana uses 120 mm!. You would think the larger film size would give you better image quality but the cheap plastic Diana lens compensates for any such possible advantage quite nicely!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

It all pretty much began with the Diana - a cheap and notoriously bad camera!. Some people decided that photos with streaks from light leaks and poor images due to very poorly made lenses were somehow "artistic"!. The Holga came along later - made by Lomo, hence the pretentious name Lomography!. Essentially it's all the same garbage!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I have to disagree with Ed W's statement, "Essentially it's all the same garbage"!.

True, the Holga / Diana will not give a technically perfect photo, but there is much more to photography than simple technically perfect reproduction!. There is mood, style, emotion, vision, documentation!.

The Holga forces YOU to be a PHOTOGRAPHER, and not just someone operating a fancy electronic device!.

I have had my Holga shots in art galleries in various cities, had one published in Light Leaks magazine, and have sold several as 24 x 24 inch prints!.

I most definitely do not consider them "garbage", and obvioulsy neither do many other people!.

Here are some of my Holga shots:

http://www!.pbase!.com/s_parrott/holga&pag!.!.!.

steveWww@QuestionHome@Com