Going "Commando": My New Holga 120N

I'm not usually a toy camera kind of person. The couple that I have don't get much use, they're just not my style.  But I recently won third place in a photo contest, and my prize was this olive camouflage "Holgawood Collection" Holga 120N, called "Commando". With the factory having shut down, I figured that at least now I'll get a chance to use one of these infamous little cameras before they are nowhere to be found  (although now Freestyle says they're coming back?!).

Of course, I am aware of the Holga's "So Tragically Flawed It's Cool" status that makes it the darling of hipsters worldwide. In fact, even the user manual extolls the virtues of its plastic lens and probable light leaks as "stretching our visual perception" in ways a proper camera apparently cannot.  The idea of random uncontrollable light leaks as a feature rather than a problem makes little sense to me, and I certainly don't think I'll be using the Holga as a primary camera for "real" shooting, but I do sort of get the allure of an all-plastic zone focus toy that requires little or no effort.

The Agfa Ansco D-6 Cadet

Agfa Ansco D-6 Cadet

A while back, I found a guy on Craigslist that was selling several random cameras out of a box in the trunk of his car. I think he was working for a thrift store and probably would collect some of the cameras that he ran across, using them as display pieces in his house. For whatever reason, he wanted to get rid of them so I met with him, rummaged through his stuff, and bought the entire box for $30. One of the 7 or 8 cameras in there was this box camera, an Agfa Ansco D-6 Cadet, which was produced from 1935 until 1941. Usually when I run across a pre-WWII box camera like this, it's a mess. The lens is missing or damaged, the winding mechanism is destroyed, etc.  In this case, it was just a little dirty. So I cleaned it up!