A Pinhole Camera For Landscape And Portrait Photography?

[Derrel]

SNIP>>There was a photographer at the Olympics who was using one of those big wooden large format cameras.

>>SNIP/

Speed Graphic - Wikipedia

From the above article:
"In 2004, American photojournalist David Burnett used his 4x5 inch Speed Graphic with a 178 mm f/2.5 Aero Ektar lens removed from a K-21 aerial camera[10] to cover John Kerry's presidential campaign.[11][12] Burnett also used a 4x5 inch Speed Graphic to shoot images at the Winter[13] and Summer Olympics.[14]"]

 

[vintagesnaps]

That was it!!! Thanks Derrel.

Good point Sparky, other cameras/lenses I mentioned do have lenses... lol I still want to take along a pinhole camera to a hockey game next season. That eliminates the whole you can't bring a big honkin' lens in to the arena thing.

 

[Derrel]

Imagine a "hockey pinhole", fitted with a "fast" f/96 pinhole and loaded with high-speed 3,200 Delta film..and quick 10- to 15-second exposures!

 

[limr]

I still want to take along a pinhole camera to a hockey game next season.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Remind me in October...

 

[FatBear]

A pinhole camera has no lens and therefore produces an unfocused image. But depth of field is awesome. Sharpness is relative and a pinhole image can appear very sharp under the right circumstances. You need to get the optimum relationship between pinhole diameter, pinhole quality, and image distance (from pinhole to image plane.)

A few things affect this apparent sharpness. In the pinhole, itself:

• The diameter of the pinhole. The smaller the diameter, the sharper the image - to a point. The edges of a pinhole produce diffraction. When the hole is large, the diffraction is just a little bit around the edge and so has a minimal effect on the image. As the hole gets smaller, diffraction affects a larger percentage of the diameter of the hole and at some point you become diffraction limited and the image begins to get blurrier.
• The machining quality of the pinhole. A perfect hole carefully machined into a piece of shim stock will produce a sharper image. But I've poked a lot of holes in tin foil with very satisfactory results.
• The thickness of the material in which the hole is machined also makes a difference. (Same comment as above.)

Unless you are shooting very close subjects or on large film, the image should be equally sharp from one corner to the other. If you are using large sheets of film, you will see reduced sharpness away from the center of the image due to diffraction limiting. A thinner piece of foil or shim stock will help reduce this.
An "f-stop" is related to focal length. It is the ratio of the focal length to the aperture diameter. Since there is no focal length in a pinhole camera there is no f-stop. But since cameras need an f-stop setting, you can calculate a sort of "optimum image distance" for a particular aperture and from that an f-stop. It is involved and for most of us, unnecessary. I'm sure instructions are probably available online if you must.

Getting it perfect is difficult and somewhat limiting. Making a cool photo is not. If you can get a body cap for your camera, and if you can force your camera to take a photo without a lens attached, then do this:

1. Drill a 1/4" hole in the middle of your body cap.
2. Cut a 1" square piece of dark duct tape.
3. Cut a 1/4" hole in the middle of the duct tape. (Square, round, doesn't matter.)
4. Cut a 1/2" piece of aluminum foil.
5. Center the foil on the sticky side of the tape.
6. Put the tape over the hole in the lens cap. Now you have a lens cap with a piece of foil in the middle.
7. Poke a hole in the foil. Use the smallest needle you can find, not a pin.
8. Put the body cap on the camera.

At this point, you can just take a few exposures, say a minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 16 minutes for starters and wing it with your intuition, adjusting exposure time and/or pinhole size. Or you can do a bit more careful, though still empirical, calibration:

You'll want to shoot a number of photos to determine the best exposure times. Don't rely on the sun for this calibration, make sure the light will remain constant for as long as you need it. Exposures will be long. With film, reciprocity failure makes for very long exposures. I honestly don't how modern digital cameras react to long exposures. I'm sure you can find the calculations somewhere online, but it might be just as easy to experiment - especially given the instant results produced by a digital camera. On
Once you have your best exposure time, save that image. Then use a larger needle and do the same - only this time you should be able to guess a little closer to your best exposure time (hint: it will be shorter as the hole size gets larger.) Then use a larger needle, a pin, etc., saving the best exposure at each hole diameter. Keep track of which needle was used to produce each of these.
Now go look at all of those "best exposures" and pick the one with the resolution you like best. Depending on your artistic vision it may or may not be the one with the highest resolution.
You can use any light meter to take a reading from the same subject, then adjust the exposure time until it approximately matches your favorite pinhole exposure time. You may have to extrapolate if the meter doesn't go far enough. That will give an "f-stop" that you can use in the future to calculate exposure times in different lighting.
Now you can peel off the tape, put on a new piece of foil, replace the tape, and poke a hole with the particular needle that you liked best. Poke it as carefully as you can to make the cleanest hole possible.
Now you have a removable pinhole "lens" for your camera. You can store it in a box or whatever works for you and it will be ready to pull out and use whenever you need it. In the film days I had one of these for my Olympus OM-1 and for my Mamiya RZ-67. My current digital camera will not take a photo without a lens.