Removable Holga Lens for Close Focus and Pinhole Modes

This simple modification will remove the stop peg on your Holga lens allowing you to use close focus (turn the focus ring further than the one person photo), create a pinholga without breaking your camera or generally do anything you want a permanently removable lens for.

I’m a longtime Holga owner, and after squiring several of them, I started modifying them to all have slightly different functions. This particular modification will not affect the overall functioning of your Holga, but will enable you to squeeze a few more functions out of your Holga.

Difficulty: Easy

You’ll Need:

• A Holga
• A little screwdriver
• A small pinhole and electrical tape (optional)

Step 1
Take off the camera back. We need to unscrew the front lens assembly from the rest of the camera. There are 2 screws involved. One on the top right, one on the bottom left.

Your whole shutter and lens assembly will now detach from the front of the camera. WARNING: There are a couple wires still running from the camera body to the lens assembly. They make your hotshoe functional, so be careful not to disconnect those. Put some electrical tape on the ends to secure them while you work.

Step 2
See the deep screw hole of the bottom left of the photo? Take that screw out. The screw is a stop that prevents your lens from unscrewing all the way.

Step 3
Put the whole thing back together and flip the camera over. Your lens will now unscrew completely. Since you no longer have a stop, you can now focus to the left of the “one person” indicator. You can also leave the lens off and tape a pinhole in it’s place. The pinhole will replace the lens and override the aperture settings, but your shutter assembly will still work.

Note: Since the lens is screw mounted, when you remove it, you can reattach it any number of ways. I recommend using nail polish to designate where to mount the lens.

Here are some examples:

Extra Credit:
Now that you have that lens off, use some electrical tape to attach it to your DSLR. The Holga lens wasn’t able to focus, but could take some amazingly sharp close up photos.

Good Luck!

written by kellysamuelson on 2012-02-06 #gear #tutorials #pinhole #camera #lens #tipster #focus #modification #pinholga #holga #camera-modification