Krappy Kamera 2014

My entry, taken on ISO 100 Kodak Ektar, f/11(?), 1/100s(?)

The photos from the Krappy Kamera competition are on display at the Soho Photo Gallery downtown until March 1st.  My entry (above) didn't make it in, but I highly encourage you to stop by and have a look at the ones that did.  My good friend Jean Miele was the juror for the event, choosing all of the photos you'll see there.  The idea of the whole thing: take a picture with a crappy camera.  You'll see from the entries that it doesn't necessarily result in a crappy picture.  The winner of this year's competition took the winning entry with a jumble of gaffing tape and cardboard with a repurposed hunk of glass at the front.  He didn't even use film.

I went to the reception last Tuesday and got to talk to the winners along with a bunch of other photographers and photo enthusiasts.  There was great conversation and free wine.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Holga 120N, with 60mm f/8 optical lens.

My camera shelf is a schizophrenic jumble of digital and analog gear from across the range, and I love all of them.  My entry was shot on my Holga.  Holgas are light-leaky rattly $30 plastic things from China, usually sold alongside the Lomo cameras and overpriced shitty film at Urban Outfitters.  The film door isn't even attached with a hinge; you have to stick it to the back of the camera with those sliding metal clips.  The shutter time varies depending on the particular Holga (usually somewhere around 1/100s).  You can choose between two apertures: sunny and cloudy (something like f/8 and f/11, but only kind of, because it's just a janky hole drilled through a piece of plastic, so who knows).  The Holga's saving grace is that it shoots onto medium format 120 film, which helps to shrink the plastic lens's rampant aberrations.  Most of the photos at Krappy Kamera were taken on Holgas.

Another one I took that day.  Didn't submit this one.

Every Holga comes with its own set of "special" defects.  As you can see, mine vignettes almost to black in only 3 of the 4 corners.  Another characteristic of the Holga is the extreme radial fringing you get all along the edges of the frame, normally something you'd hate to have in any camera you pay decent money for.  However I kind of like it for certain cases.  If you're shooting something with trees in the background, light filtering through tree leaves tends to be noisy and distracting, but the Holga's fringing has a way of evening it out without blurring it to nothing.  In the photos I took at the beach, I like what it's done to the sand in the foreground; it kind of looks like a motion blur to go with the incoming tide.

I took my entry photo on the first day and developed and scanned it at home that night.  I thought I could do a bit better (the converging lines were a bit wonky), so I decided to go back the next day.  I'd shot the first day on Kodak Ektar and Tri-X, but I didn't have any left for the second day and did not have time to buy more before the deadline.  I broke out a roll of Fuji Velvia, which costs $8, not including the $16 of E-6 processing that only a few photo labs in the city will do.  It's a film I normally reserve for my Fuji GW690ii.  After I reshot and came home, I unloaded the film from the camera, and...

I dropped it.  My fingers were still numb and stiff from the cold, and 120 film is just a loose roll on a plastic spool with a sealing tape to hold it together until you get it developed.  While fumbling around with it, the sealing tape came loose, and the whole roll toilet-papered down to the floor.  So, I was left to submit what I had.

Even though my entry didn't make it into the show, I have absolutely no regrets.  It cost me $30 worth of camera, about $40 worth of film and developer, and a $40 submission fee, along with several hours in the cold with frostbitten fingers and a runny nose, but it was the first time I'd ever set out with a project in mind and a vision to capture, instead of just running around with a camera and snapping up things that look pretty.

I would do it all over again in a heartbeat, and I'm looking forward to returning for Krappy Kamera 2015.