Is the pictures from Holga135 closer to Holga 120? Or is Holga 135BC closer to Holga120? Which should I get?

While the Holga lens will add some interesting characteristics to your images, a certain essential ingredient must be added to each photo to make them work... your brain! When learning how to use your camera (any camera- digital, or lo-fi film camera), you must put a little thought into what you are doing. Once you get the hang of it, you won't need to think about it much, as the thought process becomes automatic.

One of the things you must be aware of is your film camera's limitations. You say only a few photos came out. One mistake that I see often, is that people willl often shoot in low light condtions.

While digital cameras will often get an image under these conditions, film is usually not sensitive enough to shoot under the same condtions. Holga cameras like light, and lots of it. For now, shoot in good sunlight, or if shooting indoors, night or other low light conditions, use a flash unit.

What film are you using? Your choice of film will often make a difference. One thing to look for is a film with an ISO rating of 400.

The ISO rating is a measure of how sensitive the film is to light. Slower films with a lower ISO rating (ISO160 or 200) are easier to find in your local drugstores, but they require more light to make a proper exposure. If you want good color saturation, a film like Kodak's Portra or Fujifilms 400HD are good choices.

I have a blog post about film here: http://bit.ly/kWhichFilm Next thing to think about, is how far away are you from your subject? If you are mostly shooting things that are far away from the camera (landscapes, or buildings that are far away), you aren't giving the lens much to work with. What I mean by that, is that the unique characteristics of the Holga lens give a sharp-blurry feel, but the subject must be fairly close to your camera to make the differences more easily apparent.

If you haven't tried it, get closer to your subject, and check your focus setting as you move in. Another thing to consider, is what time of day you are shooting. If you are shooting around noon, when the sun is high, the light from the sun becomes flat, and the shadows are short and harsh.

If you try shooting in the late afternoon or early moring, the shadows become longer and the low raking sunlight will give an interesting texture to the subjects. This is a lot to think about, but just a little awareness of the conditions you are shooting under, and few other things will give your photos that little extra bit of something that you are probably missing from your photos. I have a video on how to make sure the camera settings are right for each photo.

I use that acronym SAFE to remiind me. S - Shutter setting, for everyday outdoor shooting, the camera shutter setting should be on N. A- Aperture, choose the appropriate aperture setting for the light condtions.

Sunny or Cloudy. F- Focus, set the lens to the appropriate distance from your subject. E- Expose!

Trip the shutter and take the photo, advance the film. Repeat as necessary. The video I made for this is done with a Holga 120, but the basics still apply: http://bit.ly/kShootHolga.

The point of lomographic cameras is that the pictures are not perfect. That's what Holga users like. You haven't really said what your specific issues are, but maybe you just need to play around with the settings and read the manual again to figure out how to get the effects that you want.

The point is to play around, mess some stuff up, and have fun. Many pictures taken with Holgas are also cross-processed, on expired film, etc. and you may need to do these things to achieve the look you want.

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