Close focus

Need your Holga to focus closer than 3ft? Well there are a couple of hacks you can do to enable you to focus closer. The first involves permanently modifying your lens to enable you to focus as close as 2ft. The second lets you temporarily use a close up lens to do some sweet macro photography.

2ft focus

For this you will need the following:

• Phillips '0' screwdriver
• Super glue or its equivalent
• Small file or scalpel
• Small bits of plastic you can cut easily - cable ties are perfect
• 15-20 minutes

First things first, we need to disassemble the Holga so we can unscrew the lens. Start by taking the back off the Holga and removing any mask. Unscrew the two screws and place them somewhere safe. Empty 35mm plastic film cases are awesome for this job. Now carefully take off the shutter assembly, making sure you don't damage the wire shown in step 2. Unscrew the recessed screw at the bottom right of the shutter - step 4 circled in red. You don't need to unscrew this all the way if you don't want to, just enough so that the lens unscrews. Now we need to grind away the current stop (step 5 circled in green), and fashion a new one (step 5 circled in red). Some people use short screws as a stop, but I wanted something that would keep my Holga looking pretty. Consequently, I used my awesome fabrication skills to make a plastic stop using cut strips of cable ties and some super glue. It's messy but it works!

When you've got your new stop, you'll need to work out where to place it. This is the tricky part - too far away and the lens will unscrew. You need to align it to the 'C' of 'OPTICAL LENS' on the front of your Holga. Just eyeball it and stick your stop in place with tape or something for now. To test it you'll need to screw your lens back on, then tighten that recessed screw. If you are successful, your lens should now go past the 3ft focusing icon and stop a little after. If your lens doesn't stop and keeps unscrewing, you need to make your stop larger in height.

Repeat this until you get a stop that works effectively, then glue it in place and re-assemble everything before punch the air in victory. All that's left to do now is test the focus.

Macro focusing

There are a few ways you can shoot macro photography with a Holga. Traditionally this would involve using close-up lenses attached to the front of your Holga's lens. Recently, there have been specially made close up and macro lenses for the Holga. I'll try and talk you through both of these options, so you can decide which you would prefer.

If you want more examples of macro Holga images, there is a flickr group dedicated to Holga macro, or you can search flickr for more.

Close-up lens method

For this method you will ideally have a step-up ring installed on the front of your Holga. You will then need to buy a set of close up lenses (also called diopters). You can commonly get these cheaply from eBay. A set usually comprises: +1, +2, +4, and Macro lenses. You then simply screw the relevant lens onto the front of your Holga, and set the lens on Infinity (mountain symbol). It is possible to stack lenses to make other values, for example, +1 and +2 stacked to make a +3 filter. You can figure out the distance by using the formula: FD = 1 ÷ DV where FD is your focusing distance, and DV is your diopter value. Below are some common distances:

Lens	Focusing Distance
+1	100 cm
+2	50 cm
+3	33 cm
+4	25 cm
+5	20 cm
+10	10 cm

Holga close-up kits

Two Holga close up lens kits are available:

• CLS-1 set: which lets you focus as close as 50cm, 25cm or 12cm
• MLS-1 set: which lets you focus as close as 6cm, or 3cm

I haven't managed to get my hands on either of these kits yet, but there is an excellent review on Jay Versluis' blog.

Testing focus

Once you've hacked your camera, you'll need to test the focus. When performing the macro focusing hack, you'll need to be quite accurate, so make sure you follow the instructions on Toycamera.com. For the 2ft hack, you can use the same instructions for measuring, or you can take a look at Captoe's sweet distance measuring setup.

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