I’ve always been intrigued by pinhole photography, there is an ethereal quality to it and a feeling that hearkens back to “old times”. My first foray into pinhole photography was with a Lensbaby optic, I was so frustrated I put the optic away, that was 4 years ago. And then I read an article in a photography magazine last month…..
The next thing I know I was ordering a pinhole “attachment” for my DSLR camera. It is basically a body cover with a hold drilled through the middle, and a flexible piece of material with an pin-sized hole in the middle place over it. If you are interested you can get one from Pinhole Resource. Peter was teasing me that he could have made one for me, but that might have taken months, and then I would have been on to the next crazy project idea.
Here are some things I learned along the way:
- Don’t expect sharp images. While it says F166 (that’s not a typo), there is no glass, its basically whatever the material is your shooting through.
- Clean, I mean really clean, your sensor first. I thought “what’s a few sensor spots?”…I was mistaken. On each image I had over 50 spots, with very sharply defined edges….all over the image, not just in the sky.
- Pick a strong subject. Because of the blurred effect, if you don’t have a strong central subject the image gets muddy.
- For post-processing, experiment with “old-time” techniques to capitalize on the feeling this technique creates.
pamphotography 