Sprockets!

“Don’t ever do this with a Holga,” the lab tech said to me as he held up my 120N and roll of Kodak 35mm film. “I can’t get pictures out of the film when do that.”

I was a bit confused; “this is the third or fourth roll of 35mm I’ve run through this camera,” I said. The whole process is called Sprocket Hole Photography, because of the film’s smaller size and the medium-format camera’s ability to use that magic ribbon in its entirety. Admittedly the first roll I shot was a disaster. To shoot 135 in a 120 camera you have to tape the ever-livin’ crap out of it, because there is no backing paper on the film. But somehow the layers and layers of tape I added to the outside wasn’t enough to keep light from coming through the rear window. One the second roll and taped smarter – in and out – and got way better results. But bad or good, I still got results from running 135 film through a 120 camera.

When I picked up the roll the tech looked straight at me and said, “I was wrong; it worked!” And those pix are below, taken in Bellevue Washington on June 3rd and 4th 2013.

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More about Sprocket Hole Photography at MAKEzine