Light leaks can be a great surprise after developing your negatives. Some say these light leaks are the trademark of lomo photography. While there are also some who wish their cameras never leaked any light at all. It all boils down to preference.

For this post, I’m going to show how I altered my Holga to prevent light leaks and how I get a vignette in every frame.

Here is what you need:

1. Gaffer's Tape
2. Electrical Tape
3. Scissors
4. Scotch Tape

The most important item in the list is the gaffer’s tape. You could use electrical tape or even duct tape, but gaffer’s tape has proved to be an excellent choice for taping up the camera. You can find gaffer’s tape at most camera shops. I like to use it because it adheres strongly to the camera’s body and removes cleanly when you peel it off. This is a huge benefit for our first step...

Tape around the clips

Taping the clips keeps the back of the camera from accidentally coming off while your film negative is still loaded. Trust me, this happens when you least expect it.

Use scissors to cut 2 small strips of the gaffer’s tape. Wrap one strip around each clip, starting from the front to the back of the camera. I like to fold in a corner in each strip. This helps peeling back the strip to access the clips underneath.

Tape the back window

Light rarely leaks when using 120 medium format film, but you can never be too safe. Taping this window is must when loading the Holga with 35mm film. You can see here that I also folded the top right corner of the gaffer’s tape.

Gaffer’s tape comes in handy when peeling back to see the film negative numbers and to advance the film forward.

It’s also a good idea to cut skinny strips of gaffer’s tape and place them around the top of the inside window.

Removing the film adapter

The Holga comes with two adapters—a 6x6 and 6x4.5 mask adapters. These aid in cropping each shot giving clean separations in the film. While not necessarily a bad thing, I do feel that this cropping affects the amount of vingette you could possibly get around the edges. Removing the adapter almost guarantees a vignette in every shot.

Apply electrical tape on the adapter walls

Leaving the adapter out increases the risk of your negative being scratched. Fortunately, there is a simple solution. Just cut 2 strips of electrical tape the length of the inside walls of the camera and place them length-wise along the walls. The slick rubbery material of the electrical tape helps prevents the film from being scratched as it advances from left to right.

Tape batteries in place

If you have a Holga with a built-in flash, you’ll notice batteries are located behind the adapter. If you choose to remove the adapter, you might have a problem with these batteries coming loose while shooting. This could result in weird shadows from the batteries moving into the frame. To keep this from occurring, use scotch tape to secure the battery to the inside wall of the camera. Make sure each battery is tightly in place.

So that’s it! Your Holga should now be light leak free.

Seeing as how this is the very first post for lomolovely, I want to start off by getting you all acquainted with lomography. What is lomography? And where did it come from?