Why Pinholes?
April 27th, 2022
Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day was this past Sunday. As usual I made some pinhole photos and submitted one to the website for pinhole day. Above is the photo I sent. And here it is on the pinhole day website:
http://pinholeday.org/gallery/2022/?id=432
This year was a little different because I used my new Nikon Z7II camera to make the pinhole photos. I used two commercially available pinholes. They are in Nikon F mount, so I used my FTZ adapter to mount them on the new Z camera. I haven’t been able to find any pinholes available for the Z mount yet. I’m sure they will be coming in the near future.
Here’s the camera with a simple body cap pinhole. This gives an effective “focal length” approximately of a normal 50mm lens.
And the other pinhole I used is a Thingyfy brand pinhole that is something of a wide angle.
With a pinhole the “focal length” is determined simply by the distance of the pinhole from the sensor or film plane. I’m going to share some of the other pinhole photos I made on Sunday while I talk a little about pinhole photography.
I enjoy making pinhole photos and especially enjoy Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. But I didn’t always like pinhole photography.
Back in photo school I was required to make some pinhole photos. We had to make our own cameras and pinhole and, of course, this was in the days of film. So, we ended up with many unknowns. I didn’t know what angle of view I was getting. There was no “viewfinder” so I had only a vague idea of what was going to be in the frame. I didn’t know what size my pinhole was, so there was no way to know what a correct exposure might be. And it was film. And the “camera” only held one sheet of film and had to be loaded in the darkroom. So the only way to work was to make a guess at an exposure, go to the darkroom, find out you guessed wrong, load another sheet and go back out and make another guess. Not a way that I enjoyed working.
I complained at the time, but I now understand the point of that exercise. It really forced me to learn about the whole process of photography and how things worked. I think that kind of exercise is even more important now with so many photographers out there who have never worked with film and who don’t really have a good understanding of the principles of photography and how things actually work. I don’t mean to put down young photographers. Many of them are doing excellent work…even those who shoot with phone cameras. But a deeper understanding of photography can do nothing but improve their work and their ability to adapt to different situations to make the photos they want to make.
I came back to pinhole photography when I found a better way to do it. At first that was using my Speed Graphic with a homemade pinhole and a Polaroid back. That way I could easily do test shots and see the results almost immediately so I could get a correct exposure. I still couldn’t see through the pinhole to compose, but I could shoot and adjust the composition.
Then digital cameras came along. Soon I was mounting a homemade pinhole on my Nikon D100. I made the pinhole and taped it onto a T-mount adapter to mount it on my camera. That worked ok…I was still not able to compose in the optical viewfinder, but I could immediately see the result on the screen on the back of the camera and work from there. I continued to work that way with digital SLR cameras for several years.
Then along came electronic viewfinders. Early on I got one of the first Micro 4/3 cameras and found a commercial pinhole to mount on it. Now pinhole photography had become just as easy as working with a regular lens. The electronic viewfinder let me see what I was getting on the sensor. And using a high ISO coupled with in-body image stabilization meant I could hand hold the camera and just shoot away, composing just what I wanted to get in the viewfinder. The resolution of the pinhole is so low that the high amount of noise or grain in the images really didn’t matter.
Now, with this new camera with extremely high pixel count, even though I’m using what would once have been considered astronomical ISO, the noise doesn’t really seem to be all that noticeable, even at 25,600 ISO. Simply amazing.
So, if you’ve never tried doing pinhole photos, now is the time. I encourage you to give it a try. You can find lens cap pinholes on e-bay for very little money that will mount on just about any interchangeable-lens camera. It won’t be quite as educational as the old experience with home-made cameras and film, but I still think you will learn from the experience. And next year you can do a photo on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day and share it with the world on their website.
Leave a Reply