How To Change A Holga 35mm Adaptor To A Panoramic 35mm Adaptor

The other day I found The front of a Holga 120 camera whilst roaming the city. It had obviously been outside for a while and the battery contacts for the flash were missing but it still seemed to be in pretty good working order, just missing the back.

I had always wanted to convert one of these into a 35mm Panoramic camera and even though you can buy adaptors that will do this, without the sprocket holes, I wanted to make it go all the way to the edge of the film so that the sprocket holes were in the image.

The only adaptor I could get was a standard 35mm one which just had a 36mmx24mm cut out. Below is how I adapted the adaptor 🙂

Shot from the camera after it had been converted.

This was the part that I found with no back and the flash not working

It was missing the back, which made it pretty unusable.

This is the 35mm adaptor I bought which had a back and a film holding plate.

The only 2 tools required for the conversion… A flat file and a saw (mine had a jewellers blade which lets you cut 360 degrees rather than just straight)

After it had been cut out and the plate filed smooth.

The adaptor plate in the camera.

Film loaded and ready to go.

Lots of insulation tape.

The 35mm adaptor came with a sticker that you put on the frame advance knob. I advance the film 2 frames instead of 1 for each shot.

This is why I ended up using so much insulation tape on the back of the camera. Some people like this effect but I would rather not have it 🙂

End result… I scanned it on my CanoScan 9000F Scanner which scans 120 film by just laying it on the scanner bed… Im going to make a custom scanner mask to hold the film flat sometime in the future 🙂

Enjoy