The finished HolgAgon or Modified Holga 120 PAN camera
Welcome to part two of this great Holga mod article from Regular Rod which describes how he modified his Holga 120 PAN camera to use a high quality Schneider lens. If you missed part one you can see that here.
Fixing a Hole
A series of holes all round the inside of the circumference of this scribed circle was drilled using a fine drill bit and a small power drill, (a Dremel on loan from Steve). The holes were joined up by running the drill bit along them and the waste fell out cleanly. Then the hole was made smooth and opened up to the correct diameter by careful hand filing with a medium half round file. Lots of checking ensured that the adapter fitted snugly.
Plugging the conduit hole
An essential job was that of plugging the hole caused by the conduit that originally held the wires connecting the shutter to the hot shoes. This was easily done by coating a cocktail stick in epoxy and sliding it through the conduit and cutting off the waste flush with the ends of the conduit.
The wood was made invisible on the outside by a dab or two of black marker pen.
Flange time
Four holes were drilled in the flange of the M42 to Nikon adapter. Two to line up with the convenient reinforcing lugs that are conveniently built into the front of the camera at 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock, which in turn were drilled to accept two of the 2mm countersunk headed screws. The other two holes were drilled in the flange at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock and then through the plastic front face.
The adapter came with a large slotted hole drilled into the flange. This came so close to the main hole that it would leak light. It was blocked with epoxy resin and the inside was painted to prevent light leaks. The adapter was then glued with epoxy resin adhesive and screwed into position. Once it had dried, the camera body was reassembled but with a lot more taping up and blocking of holes to preclude any future light leaks. The hardest part of this job was getting the winding knob to stay glued on. Steve came to the rescue with some stronger contact adhesive.
Reassembling the HolgAgon
It proved necessary to spin the diameter of the heads of the countersunk screws down by holding them in the Dremel chuck and spinning them gently against a file. This was to allow the helicoid to screw completely flush into the M42 thread of the adapter (now flange).
The only other engineering to do was to drill and file out a hole in the M42 body cap to allow the Synchro Compur Shutter and lens to be mounted in the body cap. This then screwed into the front of the helicoid to complete the installation.
Lens assembly
Focussing aid
It is advisable to obtain or make, as in the picture, a suitable spanner for tightening the retaining ring. When buying a lens and shutter make sure the shutter comes with its retaining ring as these are incredibly expensive to replace, for such a simple “nut”!
Lens assembled with focussing marks
The distances of various landmarks were checked and focused on using a fresnel screen clipped to the film plane with rubber bands. Marks were made on the helicoid with white Tippex to give a distance “scale” for focusing. So far these seem to be reasonably accurate. There is some play in the helicoid but the results seem to indicate that this is nothing to worry about.
Well, that’s the end of this great article on Modifying the Holga 120 PAN Camera. If you missed the first part you can find it here.
We’d like to thank Regular Rod for taking the time to go through this Mod in detail. To seen more of Rod’s fantastic Holga images please do check out his flickr page and also his Blog which also has great information about Fishing!
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