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”.