Pinhole photography has always been swathed in romance. After all, how can a camera so primitive yield such rich and dreamy results? In the digital age, however, the use of pinhole cameras has dwindled right along with film. The only photographers left using them are a few die-hards that are now the stuff of feature stories because their age-old processes make them unique. For those of us that have thrown film and negatives to the wayside, don’t fret! This is the age, after all, of technology and one can create pinhole images using their digital cameras.
The idea is rather simple, and many DIY photogs figured it out a while ago. All you need is a hole the size of a pin attached to your camera body. This led to a host of folks poking holes in their camera body caps and doing a lot of trial and error when it comes to exposure. Yes folks, in this age of technology the pinhole still maintains its primitive heritage. The one problem with this do-it-yourself pinhole “lens” is of course dust. Some people are quite uncomfortable exposing the image sensor on their multi-thousand-dollar camera bodies to the elements. The folks at Pinhole Resource have responded to this niche market with a pinhole body cap conveniently equipped with (drum roll please……..) a tiny piece of plastic covering that little hole! I repeat: yes folks, in this age of technology the pinhole still maintains its primitive heritage. I happened to receive one of these bad boys for Christmas, and here are the pro’s and con’s.
Pros:
- It’s cheap. At around $50, this is even cheaper than those cruddy kit lenses camera stores sell to amateurs.
- While the effect may not be exactly what you had in mind, the results definitely fall into the “dreamy” category.
- While digital remains king and megapixels are rising faster than the stock market, the trends at the moment are leaning towards vintage and low-fi.With the digital pinhole cap, your images step backwards and retain a little of that film-esque, low-fi look.
- It does, in fact, protect your sensor from dust.
Cons
- It’s a fixed f stop of 166. This makes a tripod necessary, even in full sun.
- You can forget about framing your image through the viewfinder. In full sun and if you shield your eyes, you can see a faint outline of what’s in the frame through the viewfinder. Otherwise it’s guesswork.
- The pinhole cap only works on manual. For those of you that shoot on auto settings, suck it up and put it on manual. It will be good for you, I promise.
- Everything photography school tells us would make you think with such an extreme f stop the images would besharp as a tack no matter the depth of field, but they are not. If you are the type that’s not into “soft focus is art,” move along, this product is not for you.
This was shot at f 166, 4 second exposure
Finally, I have taken (almost) the same image with the pinhole cap and my Canon 24-70L series with the zoom at 50mm to show you an example of what to expect.
Shot at f 22, 1/25
As you can see upon further examination, my image sensor needs to be cleaned. Next up in Gadgets and Gizmos: image sensor cleaning kits. A how-to and are they worth it?
