The Holga Close Up Lens Kit - For Close up Shots from most any Camera

I enjoy taking photos of things with filters, lenses and other gadgets.

One of the more useful of these kinds of accessories I’ve come across is the cheap plastic Holga Close Up Lens kit. I think I paid under $20 USD for the 3 lens kit. It’s actually designed for the Holga, but it fits wonderfully on almost any lens or camera as long as the close up lens fits over the main camera lens. And because it’s plastic and inexpensive, you don’t have to worry about dropping, breaking or scratching as much like you do with glass adapters.

In the kit, you get 3 lenses with varying focal lengths that will get you in closer with almost any subject or camera. These include a 120mm (4.7"), 250mm (9.8") and 500mm (19.5") lens, and they can be stacked to increase magnification. Keep in mind that since they are just plastic, you can get a little crazy with them and not worry about replacement later.

Since I don’t really do the metric system too well, I just wrote the focal lengths in inches on each lens to make it easy to use, but I found that once you get to know each lens, you just kind of guess how far it needs to be from the subject to be in focus.

The quality of the lenses is not too bad for a plastic lens and it brings that Lomography/Lomo look to your shots, and the magnification in such a small and easy to use adapter is a joy to use.

Each lens is designed with 3 notches around the body of the lens and a small plastic lip inside of the lens that grabs onto the Holga’s lens when used there. I just hold them up to my favorite camera or lens with it set to infinity and shoot. I also found that it helps to file some extra notches on your favorite lenses from this kit so you can use a rubber band or similar to strap the adapter to a bigger camera’s lens. And sometimes, they just kind of sit firmly in the lens’s filter ring without moving.

The key is to remember that you need to set your camera to focus at infinity for cameras like the Holga, Diana or similar when using these. And don’t be afraid to try flipping the close up lenses around backwards to help them fit on a lens without issues as well. If you cannot find this particular kit, some of the other close up lenses for other Lomography cameras also work.

I’ve used this technique with my Instax and Polaroids, my Lomography cameras and many other cameras. For the purposes of this blog post, I used a Nikon FE and depending on the situation a 28mm or 50mm lens. I find that the 500mm adapter is especially great for taking portrait shots on the Holga, Diana and other cameras that can’t focus up close enough. But the limits are really up to you.

What would you do with them?

To see all of the shots I took for this blog post, please visit the two albums:
Roll 1: http://www.lomography.com/homes/alienmeatsack/albums/2046499-blog-holga-cul-shots-r1-11-21-2014
Roll 2: http://www.lomography.com/homes/alienmeatsack/albums/2046501-blog-holga-cul-shots-r2-11-21-2014

geschrieben von alienmeatsack am 2014-11-23