Holga HL-C 60mm f/8 Lens for Canon DSLR Camera(Black)

Once I received the lens, I removed the single screw on the back, screwed off the lens and then popped out the small black plastic that has the pin holes in order to allow full light exposure. After putting it back together in reverse order, the lens now takes pretty cool pictures (:It is not fully in focus, it acts like an old polaroid style image, but I love it. No focus, just point and shoot. Cool effect for retro looking photos!!!!

This is a fun lens for the price, it's certainly niche but you can get a lot of cool effects out of it with very little effort. That said, it's absolutely NOT f/8. It's MUCH slower, so slow that the viewfinder will be fully blacked out in low light conditions. I did a little digging around and confirmed my suspicions that it's more like f/24. Apparently, this is because Holga lenses are terrible at focusing to infinity, so they basically make it "squint" with a very small aperture, which greatly increases the distance it can focus at. This also means it has a very deep depth of field. From what I've seen, it's easy to modify the lens to open the aperture up, which makes the depth of field much more limited and allows for some pretty crazy chromatic bokeh effects, but it also makes it impossible to focus past ~25 feet. I'm half tempted to buy another just to try that out, haha.Still gets 5 stars, just because of the price.

I ordered this lens because I wanted my pics to have the Holga effect/look to them. If this is what you’re looking for then this lens does the job, however, BEWARE. Do you have a full frame Canon or a crop/APS-C sensor? Even tho this lens will fit both cameras, you will only get the full HOLGA effect with the full frame sensor. So a canon 1D or 5D Mark whatever will benefit more from this lens than say a 70D or SL3.

I've taken a few hundred photos with this lens, so far I'm impressed. It's a pinhole lens and it does exactly what a pinhole lens us supposed to do, soft focus with darker edges and a slightly grainy/film feel to it. I read several reviews about it not being sharp, we'll that's kind of the point of it isn't it lol. For $20 you aren't going to get auto focus or any metal, but you do get a well performing specialty lens.

I see some great photos and great reviews. So I bought one. And returned it immediately. The one I received did not allow for any manual focus and there was no existing focal length I could find. Everything was blurry. It was like I was shooting with no lens at all. So, yeah, some of these may well be well worth the price. But the one I got was not worth anything at all.

My main gripe with this lens is not the image quality, which is lousy in a perfectly acceptable and expected way, but the vignetting. On my full frame camera, unless focused at infinity, the frame edges are practically black - it's a round porthole into the image. This effect is significantly lessened if the lens is focused at infinity.I would also note that the distances listed in the manual for the focus symbols are way off. The minimum focal distance is really a bit over a meter, not 70cm. I'm fine with that, but it's worth noting.Also, there is a rosette pattern to the aperture opening, with little holes around the central one. On my full frame camera, this rosette pattern is clearly visible and oddly distracting. I would have preferred a simple hole without the extras.On a crop sensor, this is a lot more useful - much of the vignetting and odd aperture effects are out of the image area.This is incredibly inexpensive, and can certainly produce fun images - and I will continue to explore it on a crop sensor camera - I wouldn't bother with it on full frame.

I like the term ( my thought process ) : pinhole camera on your DSLRCrisp pictures, no - it shouldn't, not with a pinhole. Soft lighting - soft focus - great old school photos . . . this is one of the best Christmas presents I have ever given myself ( and I have years of experience with this ). The lens itself is light - small, easy to drop into my camera bag for when I see one of those . . . what would this scene look like with mid 1800 photography

I am a total noob in the photography world, but always have loved it. I have an upcoming trip to Boston, and fell in love with the idea of doing a film album of it. However, I realized that today film cameras are not the affordable thing they used to be, especially when it boils down to revealing your pictures. I have a Canon Rebel T6 which I’m taking on the trip with me, so I figured I’d give the Holga lens a shot. In my inexperienced-experience, this lens was simple to install and use. It is very lightweight and made out of plastic. It works great in the auto setting which is great for those of us who are not handy with the manual settings. The pictures with flash also look great in my opinion . What I find the most tricky is the focusing aspect, which may not be the lens but just me. I have added some of my practice pictures in this review in case some of you want to see what kind of image can be produced with this lens:)Overall, if you are looking for a fun alternative lens that gives you pictures similar to those family photo albums from the 80’s… then you’ve got yourselves a deal with this one.**UPDATE**You all better buy this lens! I finally went to Boston and I’m so happy with the pictures I took using it. I added some in this review! Very important to play with the settings to get your best shot!!!