12-03-08 – Pinhole Camera

Okay all you technical Farkers. Here’s what this novice did. Tell me if I can enter my photos. First, I have been told how easy it is to get dust in your camera when taking the lens off. So it did not do that. I took construction paper, go ahead and laugh, cut a circle, folded it and folded it again to find the middle. Poked a hole in the middle with a needle. Hole was too small to show anything. Read Soosh’s suggestion that digital may need a larger hole and did that. Adhered it directly on the lens. Put the camera on manual, played with the f-stop, focused and took pictures. I like the way they turned out. Kinda whispy looking. But you need to tell me if I can enter them.

Thats is similar to what I did this summer just messing around. If you look at my earlier post you see an example.It kind of gives a bit of a Holgaish effect.

As for if it is acceptable, nobody ever ruled it out when I brought it up the first time.

Kilerclaw? Elsinore?

I have been playing with the pinhole lens cap but am still not overjoyed with anything yet.
I think pinhole photography is better suited to film but I don’t have the time to shoot off a roll and develop it before tomorrow.

Okay all you technical Farkers. Here’s what this novice did. Tell me if I can enter my photos. First, I have been told how easy it is to get dust in your camera when taking the lens off. So it did not do that. I took construction paper, go ahead and laugh, cut a circle, folded it and folded it again to find the middle. Poked a hole in the middle with a needle. Hole was too small to show anything. Read Soosh’s suggestion that digital may need a larger hole and did that. Adhered it directly on the lens. Put the camera on manual, played with the f-stop, focused and took pictures. I like the way they turned out. Kinda whispy looking. But you need to tell me if I can enter them.

It’s fine by me. It’s not unlike the pinhole I made with one of the aperture disks on my Lensbaby. This is such a specialized contest, that I think we need to allow for any and all methods of producing a pinhole picture, whether that involves a lens or not, special camera, film or digital, whatever. Turnout’s likely to be low as it is, so I would prefer to err on the side of inclusion. Unless Killerclaw raises a serious objection, I don’t think any good faith effort at pinhole photography should be disqualified.

Good because I’d rather use this

than this

even though the second one is a true pinhole the dust on my sensor is ruining all the shots I am taking.

🙂

A hole stuck on the front of a lens in most cases is going to produce mechanical vignetting rather than functioning as a pinhole aperture (basically just blocking out light from the edges of the image). You can tell that NoBigDeal’s example isn’t working as a pinhole because the background is out of focus and the foreground is sharp. If the hole was functioning as an aperture it would all be more or less the same sharpness (or unsharpness)

Some lenses are designed so the aperture is near/at the front of the lens (like the lensbabies), in which case you could produce pinhole images by adding a pinhole aperture to the front of the lens, but the results would look like they were shot with a pinhole camera.

Ugh, looks like my triumphant return will have to wait another week. I wanted to do this one, but I didn’t have time to build a camera and my digital doesn’t use a lens cap so that wasn’t an option.

/will vote anyway

Too much work. Pinholes are a lot of fun, but I don’t think this is a particulary good assignment. I liked the challenge and wish I had been paying closer attention and I would have started a rig weeks ago. But unless you have a DSLR and a body cap you are willing to sacrafice, this isn’t pinhole photograpy. 😈

A hole stuck on the front of a lens in most cases is going to produce mechanical vignetting rather than functioning as a pinhole aperture (basically just blocking out light from the edges of the image). You can tell that NoBigDeal’s example isn’t working as a pinhole because the background is out of focus and the foreground is sharp. If the hole was functioning as an aperture it would all be more or less the same sharpness (or unsharpness)

Some lenses are designed so the aperture is near/at the front of the lens (like the lensbabies), in which case you could produce pinhole images by adding a pinhole aperture to the front of the lens, but the results would look like they were shot with a pinhole camera.

this