First Impressions: Holga HGL-N

The Holga HGL-N is a 60mm glass lens for the Nikon F-Mount. Only, you can’t buy one, because it technically doesn’t exist. But, you can make one, if you have a mind to. It’s simply the Holga HL-N with the plastic lens replaced by the glass lens of the 120GFN. And the good news is, you don’t have to actually remove the lens from the barrel; you can simply loosen the stop screw and unscrew the whole barrel assembly. And if you want your 120GFN back, you can just swap ’em back; without the stop screw, they’ll both focus a little bit closer.

Wow! What a difference! I drilled out the “vignetting” mask long ago for use with my full-frame DSLR, and the “real” Holga lens has a much larger aperture on the barrel assembly than the HL-N! That means faster, and sharper due to the glass lens. It solves many problems associated with the original HL-N.

One thing; I think infinity focus might be a little off, just as it is with the plastic lens. But that should be easily corrected with another minor mod.

Here are a few samples. Some are taken with the Holga close-up lenses (also glass) which fit perfectly on the “HGL-N”.

Heading to Holgaville; Next Stop, Dianaland

Taking a break from digital. With the diminishing Holga offerings from B&H, I thought It might be a good time to order a Holga 120GFN. It arrived, along with the 120 Pan from HolgaCamera.com yesterday.

I'm so glad I waited. This new Holga works correctly right out of the box, no mods necessary. I never did get around to modifying my 120FN. The 120 Pan as well. There are slight changes in the tooling of the GFN, but the most noticeable difference is the lens barrel. They got rid of the focus scale insert, and now tampo the scale right on the barrel itself. The tooling of the barrel is also better in general. The 120 Pan is even flocked inside.

As these came directly from Hong Kong, it’s likely closer to the source and thus newer stock. I can’t wait to shoot with these and to spend some quality time with Diana as well.