What is Holga?

WHAT IS HOLGA?

The Holga is an inexpensive, medium format 120 film toy camera, made in China, appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic.
The Holga's cheap construction and simple meniscus lens often yields pictures that display vignetting, blur, light leaks, and other distortions, black corners. The camera's quality problems have become a virtue among some photographers, with Holga photos winning awards and competitions in art and news photography.

The Holga camera was designed by T. M. Lee, and first appeared in 1982. At the time, 120 rollfilm in black-and-white was the most widely available film in mainland China. The Holga was intended to provide an inexpensive mass-market camera for working-class Chinese in order to record family portraits and events. After the cameras began to be distributed in the West, some photographers took to using the Holga for its surrealistic, impressionistic scenes for landscape, still life, portrait, and especially, street photography. In this respect, the Holga became the successor to the Diana and other 'toy' cameras previously used in such work. A Holga photograph by David Burnett of former vice-president Al Gore during a campaign appearance earned a top prize in a 2001 White House News Photographers' Association Eyes of History award ceremony.
*source from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holga

GOLDEN RULES OF LOMOGRAPHY

1. Take your camera everywhere you go
2. Use it any time- day & night
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it
4. try the shot from the hip
5. approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible
6. Don't think (William Firebrace)
7. Be fast
8. You don't have to know beforehand what you captured on film
9. Nor afterwards
10. Don't worry about any rules

Comparison between different model of HOLGA