Lomographic Lenses for DSLRs: The Holga HL-N and Others

Holga HL-N, a 60mm f/8.0 “Toy” lens for Nikon DSLRs
Photo courtesy of RamboHK

Somehow this one slipped by me. While I wasn’t looking, The fine folks at Holga began producing their own SLR lenses in Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax and Sony mounts. This is good news for me, because I have the Holgamods version of this lens, and well, it leaves a lot to be desired.

The genuine Holga version has the lens correctly positioned in front of the aperture, and I’m pretty sure there will be a hard stop at minimum focus. And there’s no reason to believe that it won’t lock in place, since its custom mount is not based on a body cap.

I was not at all impressed by Holgamods version. I can accept its very long equivalent focal length of 90mm, as it makes for a nice portrait/closeup lens. But it can’t achieve infinity focus since the thickness of the body cap is too great, so it’s uses are limited. The genuine Holga version looks very promising indeed. And more so, since the Mark II is available, which addresses the vignetting issue.

The newer version includes a (second?) perforated aperture disk at the rear of the lens to create a vignetting effect. I’ve read mixed feelings about this, since the second set of smaller holes around the central aperture seems to create an uneven effect. Still, it’s a move in the right direction. It looks as though this is a separate piece of plastic glued to the back of the lens, so perhaps it can be modified further to refine the effect. It appears to use a genuine Holga 60mm meniscus lens in what may be a newly tooled lens barrel. The new mount is very thin which is sure to allow for infinity focus. So it definitely seems worth a try for under $25.00.

But I have to ask the question, wouldn’t it be great if Holga designed a lens from ground up for APS-C cameras? Instead of 60mm, it would be 24mm to yield a wide angle, or at the very least, 35mm to yield a “normal” angle. Then, I remembered the “Loreo Lens in a Cap” I came across a while ago.

Loreo Lens in a Cap, a 35mm f/5.6-64 “Pancake” lens
Photo courtesy of Loreo Asia, Ltd.

This is a 3-element, fixed-focus, 35mm plastic pancake lens with an adjustable aperture from f/5.6 to f/64. And, it seems to have native vignetting qualities. This also might be a good venue for digital lomographic experimentation.

Then of course there’s the Diana lenses along with their adapter. In particular the 38mm would at least yield a 57mm angle of view.

So, I have a Loreo Lens in a Cap on order, and a sneaking suspicion a Holga HL-N might be on the way for Father’s day. Perhaps we’ll do a “shoot out” at some future date to see how they stack up against one another.