Holga Photo simulation

My brother in law was playing with his cheap plastic Holga camera when he came to visit, and I was inspired to see if I could approach the effect digitally.  

The camera original shot on medium format film, which was then often cross-processed, resulting in a unique artistic color pallette.  Cross processing is intentionally or accidently developing film using the wrong chemical baths.  Here's an actual image from an actual Holga, that has been cross-processed:

Note the yellow-orange skin tones and cyan sky that is the signature of a cross-processed image.

For maximum 'realism', I duplicated the camera as much as possible with the tools I had at hand, namely a Canon Rebel xti and a prime lens:

F/13, 50mm (not 60mm, sigh), ISO 400, shutter speed 1/100.  

Then I played with a variety of 'old timey' action sets and filters, most of which were awful and didn't do anything close to what I wanted.  I ended up doing most of the effect 'by hand'.

Here's a source image we took that duplicated all the Holga settings (except focal length):

And here is my attempt at emulating the effect:

I'd say I got 60% there.  I'll fiddle some more and see if I can do better.  The analog process of the plastic camera is fun, as they are about one step above shoebox/pinholes.  Plus, hacking it to use 35mm film instead of medium format is a fun challenge.  They're about $20 on Amazon....hmmm...may have to pic one up.