Holga 35 Fisheye

Recently, the Lomography store had a sale on some things, so I decided to pick up the slip-on fisheye lens and fisheye viewfinder for the Holga 35.  I have had the Holga 35bc (bent corners)  camera for several years, and it's a fun, simple toy camera that uses 35mm film.  Like its big brother (or big sister), it has very minimal controls - sunny or cloudy, bulb or instant, the four focus zones, and a hotshoe.  In general, 400 ISO film works for most conditions with this camera.

The lens and viewfinder come in little attractive boxes, well-packaged. That's always been a hallmark of Lomography -- they pay attention to package design.  No plain cardboard boxes for them!  The instructions inside are easy to follow, and the lens comes with front and rear protective caps. The lens and viewfinder fit exactly as they are supposed to, as well.

Looking through the viewfinder gives you a circular fisheye view, which does not actually match what the camera is getting.  It's good for framing, and certainly better than the regular viewfinder.

Since the fisheye is such wide-angle, I wonder if the actual focus position makes any difference.  Nonetheless, I set the lens to infinity while shooting with it.

The Holga 35 is a great cold-weather camera in that there are literally no controls to fiddle with, so for mittened hands, it is great.

I finished up a roll of 400 ISO Kodak (somewhat expired) color film and sent the film to Blue Moon Camera and Machine, where they do a wonderful job with processing.

I'll post two images here to give you an idea of the fisheye effect from this lens.  It's not a circular fisheye such as the one you get with the Diana version. The negatives are cropped at the top and bottom,   The effect is pretty good, though,  and perhaps the cropped image looks better than the circular fisheye.