A Holga Update: It Gets Weirder

This little toy camera continues to be a fickle friend.

After the slew of wonderful suggestions I received about my Holga struggles, I felt re-energized to give my plastic camera another shot. (It helped that I realized that my black-and-white film was color process, and therefore developed in different chemicals. Silly me.)

The good news is that my Holga has been yielding images! No more blank rolls!

Yay!

The bad news?

My cross-processed slide film has been beyond bizarre.

What?

The pictures look almost solarized, a process that usually occurs when prints (or, apparently, negatives) are exposed to extra light. Instead of the high-contrast, super-saturation that should be expected with slide film, the prints are gray, muted, muddy.

Is it me? Perhaps my camera is popping open in my purse and exposing my film.

Is it my photo lab? Perhaps when they develop my film rolls, they’re inadvertently exposing them to light.

Or it is something else entirely?

I plan to bring my current roll to a different developer to compare the difference. I’ve also been thinking about rigging up the camera to use 35mm film (that is, the film in metal canisters that most people are familiar with) instead of 120mm (the medium format film the Holga takes), though that might add complications instead of removing them.

Even with subpar images, it’s exciting to attempt to figure out how this all works. Trial and error might be tedious, but it keeps me on my toes.

I wanted this camera to keep things unpredictable, and it’s certainly delivered. Now let’s hope I can get some nicer-looking images out of the darn thing!

Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Has this ever happened to you before? Please let me know!