Holga 120 CFN Medium format camera

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Holga 120 CFN plastic camera for 120 film, a flash version with four color settings, tested and working in very good condition, dating from circa 1980–1990.

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Description from the seller

The Holga 120CFN is a „plastic-fantastic” medium-format camera for 120 film with cult status.
Lomography in its purest, most orthodox form. You can find many examples online of how creatively this model creates beautiful, unique photos.
The Holga 120 CFN is a flash version with four color settings: blue, yellow, red, and white.
In my copy, which I shot a few rolls with, everything works: flash, shutter, aperture size, and... well, there's really nothing more. But let's be honest, it's a cheap made plastic toy camera, because that's how it was conceived and designed. You can't expect precise shutter speeds here; I don't know what the actual shutter speed is, but the photos turn out differently. Sometimes they're great, sometimes not. Unpredictable. This is the essence of Lomography.
Here are a few photos I took with this camera.
I'd rate it in very good condition, and these cameras are becoming a thing of the past. They weren't meant to last forever, and fewer and fewer working units exist. On the other hand, there's not much that can go wrong, because there aren't many of them.
History (credits Camera.wiki.org):
The Holga is a plastic camera for 120 film, whose design originated in Hong Kong in 1981. While many countries produced basic 120 snapshot cameras in the decades before this, the Holga's low-tech approachability and artfully-flawed optics have elevated it to a particular cult status today.
Universal Electronics, Ltd. was started in Kwun Tong, Hong Kong and was originally intended to produce electronic components like capacitors. The Holga was created as a new product line for the company when basic electronic flash units became very common and inexpensive. The origin of the name Holga is related to the flash strobes. The early WOC (Wing On Cheung) flash units had the Chinese characters "very bright" which is pronounced as Holgon in Cantonese. Anticipating increasing demand for cameras in mainland China, T. M. Lee set about designing a simple, rugged camera for 120 film which could be sold at an at affordable price. The original camera had only one shutter speed, scale focusing guided by four pictograms; and an aperture switch for sunny versus cloudy conditions.
As with another cost-reduction exercise, the Holga's inexpensive plastic lens gave its photographs quite a distinctive visual signature including and pincushion distortion. To reduce these faults, the camera was supplied with a snap-in mask cropping the frame to 6x4.5 cm portrait orientation (although the viewfinder image is square). The Holga was originally manufactured in Hung Hom, Hong Kong but later in 1990 moved production to mainland China in Changping, Guangdong.
Well before the Holga existed, a number of fine-art photographers had begun using low-quality cameras for their visual qualities, most notably Nancy Rexroth's Diana photos from the mid-1970s. But by the time of the Holga's introduction, original Diana cameras had been out of production for a decade; and the Holga gradually emerged as a leading camera for those aligned with a "lo-fi," toy camera aesthetic. The optical flaws revealed by shooting a full 6x6 Holga image became a desired effect for many photographers, who removed the 6×4.5 film gate to yield an image with indistinct, dark edges.
While today many associate the Holga with the Lomography brand, the camera had already been on sale for a decade before the creation of the Lomography Society. However LSI is a significant global distributor for Holga cameras today.
Shipping with courier.
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The Holga 120CFN is a „plastic-fantastic” medium-format camera for 120 film with cult status.
Lomography in its purest, most orthodox form. You can find many examples online of how creatively this model creates beautiful, unique photos.
The Holga 120 CFN is a flash version with four color settings: blue, yellow, red, and white.
In my copy, which I shot a few rolls with, everything works: flash, shutter, aperture size, and... well, there's really nothing more. But let's be honest, it's a cheap made plastic toy camera, because that's how it was conceived and designed. You can't expect precise shutter speeds here; I don't know what the actual shutter speed is, but the photos turn out differently. Sometimes they're great, sometimes not. Unpredictable. This is the essence of Lomography.
Here are a few photos I took with this camera.
I'd rate it in very good condition, and these cameras are becoming a thing of the past. They weren't meant to last forever, and fewer and fewer working units exist. On the other hand, there's not much that can go wrong, because there aren't many of them.
History (credits Camera.wiki.org):
The Holga is a plastic camera for 120 film, whose design originated in Hong Kong in 1981. While many countries produced basic 120 snapshot cameras in the decades before this, the Holga's low-tech approachability and artfully-flawed optics have elevated it to a particular cult status today.
Universal Electronics, Ltd. was started in Kwun Tong, Hong Kong and was originally intended to produce electronic components like capacitors. The Holga was created as a new product line for the company when basic electronic flash units became very common and inexpensive. The origin of the name Holga is related to the flash strobes. The early WOC (Wing On Cheung) flash units had the Chinese characters "very bright" which is pronounced as Holgon in Cantonese. Anticipating increasing demand for cameras in mainland China, T. M. Lee set about designing a simple, rugged camera for 120 film which could be sold at an at affordable price. The original camera had only one shutter speed, scale focusing guided by four pictograms; and an aperture switch for sunny versus cloudy conditions.
As with another cost-reduction exercise, the Holga's inexpensive plastic lens gave its photographs quite a distinctive visual signature including and pincushion distortion. To reduce these faults, the camera was supplied with a snap-in mask cropping the frame to 6x4.5 cm portrait orientation (although the viewfinder image is square). The Holga was originally manufactured in Hung Hom, Hong Kong but later in 1990 moved production to mainland China in Changping, Guangdong.
Well before the Holga existed, a number of fine-art photographers had begun using low-quality cameras for their visual qualities, most notably Nancy Rexroth's Diana photos from the mid-1970s. But by the time of the Holga's introduction, original Diana cameras had been out of production for a decade; and the Holga gradually emerged as a leading camera for those aligned with a "lo-fi," toy camera aesthetic. The optical flaws revealed by shooting a full 6x6 Holga image became a desired effect for many photographers, who removed the 6×4.5 film gate to yield an image with indistinct, dark edges.
While today many associate the Holga with the Lomography brand, the camera had already been on sale for a decade before the creation of the Lomography Society. However LSI is a significant global distributor for Holga cameras today.
Shipping with courier.
Thank you for your attention.

Details

Era
1900-2000
Brand
Holga
Model/type nr
120 CFN
Physical condition
Very good
Functional condition
Tested and working
Film type
120 / 220
Estimated period
1980-1990
PolandVerified
18
Objects sold
Private

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