Shooting 35mm with the Holga 120

There’s a 35mm film adapter kit available for the Holga 120 which enables you to take standard 3:2 35mm frames. It includes a 36mm x 24mm mask, and a back with the frame counter window covered up. The mask has two plastic brackets on the left side to center the film cartridge, and guides to ensure that the film remains centered on the mask opening. You use the original 120 take-up spool with no additional modifications.


In theory, it should work quite well, although I’m sure the vignetting effect will be missing, and the images will be more tightly cropped as if using a 60mm lens on a standard 35mm camera (slightly longer than a “normal” lens.) Hopefully, I can use the Holga .5x wide angle converter to restore the wide angle effect.

Frame advance will be pretty straightforward; After each picture, I advance 22 clicks. If I wanted to maximize the amount of exposures, I’d reduce the number of clicks by one every other frame to compensate for the increasing diameter of the take-up spool. This of course requires tracking the number of frames taken.

However, in my opinion it’s not the best way to use 35mm film in the 120 Holga. The best way is to modify the standard 6cm x 6cm mask to create a 35mm panoramic adapter. This way, you can take advantage of the full width of the 6cm 120 frame size, plus the full width of the 35mm film, including the sprocket hole area. This is known as “Sprocket Hole” photography, and is quite popular amongst the Lomography community.

So, along with my 35mm adapter kit, I ordered an extra 6cm x 6cm mask. I plan to modify it by adding brackets to center the 35mm cartridge, and possibly add film guides that just barely catch the edge of the film to stop it from curling. But I’m still on the fence about that. Like the standard 36mm x24mm adapter, I would advance the film by clicks, but use 36 to cover the full 6cm width. Or, I could advance less clicks and superimpose the next image on top of the previous one. When processing the film, I’ll ask them not to cut it, so I can decide for myself what constitutes a frame. My Epson V500 scanner should have no problem scanning such a wide frame.