A friend of mine, seeing the studio shots of her and her fiancé, gasped, "Why do the photos seem to have a layer of masking texture on them?"
Fact is, she has been so used to the digital-fidelity photos that those film images look almost unacceptable to her. Her remarks struck on me that we have really come a long way in digital photography. Well, there are folks still incessantly pixel-peeping and complaining about the "noisy" digital images.
^Holga is widely available in Hong Kong, notably in Kubrick Cafe of Broadway Cinematheque and the fancy stationery section of CitySuper.
However, much like an audiophile will claim that vinyl records still sound better than digitally enhanced CDs and MP3s, many photographers feel a similar partiality for low-fidelity photos.
"Digital pictures are almost too clean and too sharp; there's no texture to them," says Norm Yip Wai-sing, 46, a professional photographer in Hong Kong. "But with film, because it's made out of chemicals, there's texture inherent in them and that shows in the photos."
Off all the legacy of the film era, the Holga cameras, alongside the Lomos, are probably surviving best.
Holga the Hong Kong Connection
The Holga was meant to be a cheap toy camera for the mainland market. Yet, more than two decades after it was conceived at a Hung Hom (Note: a local district which was more of an industrial area then)factory in Hong Kong, the Holga has gained a cult following worldwide rather like that for the Russian-made Lomo cameras.
In today's digital age, where portability and convenience are primary considerations, the Holga is selling better than ever despite its clunky size and primitive design.
Even its creator admits he was just trying to make a quick buck when he came up with the idea for the plastic camera. "I was looking to make something simple and cheap," says 79-year-old Lee Ting-mo, founder of Universal Electronics Industries. "I wasn't too ambitious then." In the 1970s, Universal Electronics made stand-alone flash guns for cameras. But when Japanese camera company Konica released the world's first camera with a built-in flash in 1979, sales plummeted.
^The characteristic vignetting effect by Holga
The Original of the Name Holga
"I had to come up with something, it was a matter of survival," he says. Mr Lee had neither the technology nor the ambition to compete against powerhouse Japanese manufacturers, so he designed a simple camera using the cheapest materials. He insisted on adding a built-in flash unit, however. "I wanted to show off what we did best - making flash units," he recalls.
When the product was first tested, Mr Lee bragged to observers that the camera was ho gwong, meaning "very bright" in Cantonese (Note: the language spoken in an extensive part of the southern China and Hong Kong). He says some non-Chinese buyers later dubbed it "Holga", and the name stuck.
Made entirely of plastic, the Holga uses medium-format 120 film and the resulting photos are often blurry because the lens leaks light. With a clunky shutter that makes a loud clicking sound after each snap, the Holga looks and feels like a toy.
Because of a design flaw that leaves images underlit, pictures taken with the Holga usually display what is known as "vignetting", where the brightness of the image fades towards the edges, producing dark corners with saturated centres. Sales were so badly affected by the design problem that Mr Lee was ready to stop the line.
Holga Conquers
"We mass-produced the first batch of 5,000 and it moved so slowly I was going to discontinue after they were gone," he says. But the camera found life overseas when a group of analogue photography enthusiasts in Austria who had been using a Lomo model got their hands on the Holga.
"Ironically, they considered the vignetting problem an artistic effect," Mr Lee recalls. "The popularity of the camera picked up overseas and the orders started coming in."
Over the next two decades, the Holga's popularity continued to spread, especially in the United States and Japan. Even professional photographers began taking notice, most notably award-winning American photojournalist David Burnett.
Leading Hong Kong cinematographer Henry Chung Yau-tim is even more extravagant in his praise of the Holga. "I am an avid stereo photographer and I used to shoot with a Hasselblad XPAN. That camera costs HK$30,000 and the lens another HK$30,000," he says. "I now use a Holga 120 Stereo Camera, which costs HK$600 and produces the same pictures. I seriously cannot tell the difference." Mr Chung says he carries his Holga with him at all times.
^ The special effect afforded by Holga which is known as the "sprocket hole" exposure
Anticipation - the Magic of Film Photography
For many young Hongkongers, the appeal of the Holga lies in its simplicity. "What I love about the Holga is how basic it is, the lack of options makes for an unpredictable shooting experience," says Jeffrey Siu Tsz-Hang, 15. "You never know how a photo has turned out until you've developed the film. The anticipation fascinates me."
Young Holga fans tend to gather in Facebook groups to share photos and tips. Carmen Ng Ka-man, 22, a journalism student at the University of Hong Kong, started one of the earliest Facebook pages for fans in the city in 2007. "I noticed there wasn't a dedicated page for fans in Hong Kong," she says. "I thought that was weird, considering I know many people who love to capture Hong Kong's spectacular east-meets-west cityscape." The page, now just one of many on the social-networking website dedicated to Holga images, has more than 1,200 members.
Ms Ng fell in love with the Holga as she was about to complete secondary school. "I love the lack of rules with the Holga. It was a perfect tool to capture our youth before we each headed off to different universities."
Holga with Spine
Despite the Holga's steady rise in popularity this decade - the millionth Holga was sold last year and a search on popular photo-sharing site flickr .com yields 22,975 Holga users - for many years Mr Lee and Universal Electronics focused on manufacturing, content to leave the lucrative distribution and marketing business to others. However, that changed a few years ago following a split with Lomography Asia, which used to act as the local distributor for the Holga.
"They came to us a few years ago and requested to be the sole distributor of the Holga," Mr Lee says. "I rejected their offer because I didn't like the monopoly aspect."
Their relationship soured after that, Mr Lee says, and this year Universal Electronics launched a marketing division, Holga Inspire, and opened five shops across the city.
Holga Inspire's public relations co-ordinator, Christine So Chi-yuet, says their main goal is to develop a community of Holga photographers worldwide through exhibitions.
Ever practical, Mr Lee sees Holga Inspire as a means of ensuring his company's survival, just as he did more than 20 years ago when he created the Holga. Let's hope that the Holga retains its spine and don't let the marketing people kill it by being ambitious enough to come up with digital Holga cameras just as with the worse taste ever in plying digital cameras with gimmicks like face-, smile-detection functions and whatnots.
(Information adpoted from South China Morning Post. Photos are permitted to use by Wiki and copyrighted to Mark Wheeler and Thomas Barnes)
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