Jakub Pitha, Times Square. Holga photograph.

The Hong Kong factory where the Holga camera is made has announced that there will be no more. "…all Holga tooling has already been thrown away and there is nothing available for sale," a spokesman said, according to an announcement on Freestyle. Current stocks in stores are all that are left.

The mostly plastic, very cheap Diana camera became a hot thing in the 1970s, with aficionados turning to a "lo-fi" sort of aesthetic as a reaction against ever-escalating image-quality perfectionism. The Diana soon went away, but by the '80s the Holga stepped up to take its place. Once the newcomer, it has long outlived the original Diana and the original fad, enduring for 33 years according to Freestyle.

There's nothing quite like the look of its large negative and simple plastic lens, which has now inspired huge amounts of work and many mimicking apps, not to mention Holga interchangeable lenses to get the inimitable look on Nikon and Canon DSLRs. (No word on whether those will go away too.) Google "Holga photo" and hit "Images" and enjoy some of the great freewheeling work people have done with these highly limited cameras.

Jakub Pitha told me he bought two more for when his first one wears out. Then he added, "...they are made half-worn out, but you know what I mean."

We do. Holga, we hardly knew ye!

Mike

(Thanks to Jakub)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

David O: "I confess, I'm a Holga user. I like the way it distorts the images and you never know exactly what you will get when the film is developed. Keeps photography fresh for me. I've got two at the moment, a yellow one for color and a black one for B&W. I wouldn't use it for my only camera but it allows me to embrace randomness in my pictures."

David Bennett: "I have never wanted a Holga until now."

Mark Cotter: "Some of my most interesting photographs are taken with the Holga. I used to like experimenting with double exposures on it. There is now a digital Holga—it was a Kickstarter campaign. Don't know how widespread it will become."

Darlene: "I remember shooting my mother's Diana camera way back when. It was one of the neatest experiences I had as a young artist. It produced lots of cool blurring and vignetting; I had never seen anything like it before! It was my first step into creative photography, and shortly thereafter, a Polaroid camera and film showed up and I never stopped photography from then on—I was hooked!"

Roger Bradbury: "The Diana a hot thing in the 1970s? I had one in the 1960s! Take that, yer bunch of trendies! :-) "

Steve Snyder: "I was a long time Holga user going back about 15 years. I was even published in a couple of Toy Camera magazines back in the day, but as time has marched on I've grown weary of the Holga aesthetic and the whole Lomography movement. Anyone else feel the same way?"

David Burnett: "There seems to be an unending flow of news which dismisses some sweet tool of the past, and Holga is no exception, though I hope someone, in the spirit of New55, manages to buy some of the dies and equipment before it's all tossed into the garbage heap. I have used Holgas as an ancillary camera (light enough you never really complained about its weight) to whatever else I was shooting, 35mm, digital, medium or large format. If something was interesting, it was a little more interesting as a Holga image. It seemed to fit the perfect spot, between the ultimate search for sharpness and perfection and a photogram.

"What always annoyed me was when photographers would have a special 'Plastic Camera' page on their website. To me, it's either a picture or it isn't. Just put the pictures with the good ones, and show me those, and if I'm clever enough to figure out it was a Holga, so be it. But it was, like a Speed Graphic or a X-Pan, just another tool, and one which had its moments. Randy Smith, the great after-market genius in upstate NY, created a whole new genre of Holgas by inventing the Bulb shutter, cable release, and a few other little improvements which actually made the camera competitive. I just bought a couple of the last batch, had Randy add a cable release (honestly, is there anything better than a four-second Holga exposure?) and they sit on the shelf awaiting some manifest moment as yet to show itself. And even the 'creative tools' on the newer digi P&S cameras isn't quite like the Holga itself. Viva Holga."