Pretty crazy, isn't it? And actually it's a really good thing to have, especially when I'm having so much financial trouble preventing me from shooting medium format everyday now.
So, I tried to ask a friend in Hongkong to help me get it. But a few days later, a question poped up in my brain "So... how am I gonna rewind the 35mm film roll... without a film rewind crank???" ... cause I noticed there is no film rewind crank included in the package of that Adapter from the Lomography shop.
I got online to search for the answer, and the answer is that there's no way you can rewind the film roll. You have to take the film roll out of the camera in a complete dark-room, and then rewind it with your hands.
Though quite disappointed, I accidentally found out this very awesome link about modifying the 120 HOLGA to shoot with 35mm film.
You don't need to have anything but a roll of black tape (the thicker, the better), some small pieces of foam, some small-size rubber bands, and that's it.
Not until a few days ago, did I start to modify my 120 HOLGA. I'm not gonna re-show all the process of modifying the HOLGA and how things are gonna work, but this picture below shows how did I modify mine.
Please read the link above, or at least the video in the link, so that you won't get confused about what I'm gonna talk about next.
So as you see in the picture, I've got blue tape instead of black, since I don't have black tape at home (and this is a mistake that I made, to know why, see below). I've got cotton-wool wrapped around by tape to use as foam pieces (that works out fine, I promise). And a pencil to help me with adjusting the rubber bands on the film spool.
I did everything following the directions in the videos and put a 35mm DNP CENTURIA 100 roll inside for a test.
The DNP CENTURIA 100 was a strange kind of film that I've never saw or heard about, it was a gift from the owner of the photolab where I always stop by for developing and scanning my film rolls.
For the whole story about that and the owner of the best photolab in town, I guess I'm gonna have to write another post later.
Back to the experiment of modifying my 120 HOLGA. Everything was in the right place and worked out well. It took me 2 days to finish the testing roll, there was no trouble shooting... until I finished the roll, had it developed and scanned.
Also, If you wanna know, this is how I take the film roll out and rewind it, not in a dark room, but in a dark box.
The owner of the photolab let me use it when I said I just couldn't wait to see the pictures from this experiment film rolls, I didn't wanna get home and get into my bathroom to do it, cause it would take another 1 hour driving from downtown to my house and all the way back to scan the film roll.
Let's take a look at the photos. Since it was a 35mm roll inside a medium-format camera (with 6x6 mask), the images also appear on the edges of the film roll where the film perforations are, creating "sprocket hole photography".
I asked the people at the photolab to scan the roll with a medium-format scanner so I can get everything, cause if you scan it with the normal 35mm scanner, you will lose the edges.
As you see, nearly all the photos have a big red square on them. It is the light-leak from the red frame-counting window on the back of the camera. It appeared cause I didn't cover it with thick and black tape, actually I did, but with blue tape, so the strong sun-light could still go through, not much, but enough to screw up the photo.
And this is how I fixed this problem, I had a really thick piece of black carton taped onto the back of the HOLGA, also a click-note is attached so when I finish a shot, I can tick on it.
... (a week later)...
And this is the shots coming out from the 2nd film roll... the carton piece works!!! :)
But still I've got some wrong-white-balance shots, which I decided to transfer into B&W to make them look a bit better...
I've got a trip to border of Vietnam and Cambodia last weekend...
And so... that's it... it took me an hour, some tape, cotton-wool and 2 film rolls to carry out a successful experiment which helps me on saving so much money from shooting medium format with my HOLGA, and also, this 35mm-panoramic frame is insanely inspirational!!!... :)
