Pinhole Lenses
Many photographers ("You know who you are," says the face in the mirror) scour the Web's plethora of lens reviews looking for that magical new or vintage lens that offers unmatched sharpness, contrast, and color rendition. Yet, it is the pinhole that casts aside all of those wish-list items and delivers a unique photographic experience. Digital or analog, regardless of format, the pinhole camera and modern
Lensbaby has announced its latest release in the digital pinhole photography market: the Lensbaby Obscura. For those not familiar with it, pinhole photography does not use a lens, and a traditional "camera obscura" works when all the light from the scene passes through a tiny hole in a plate or window (or lens cap) and is projected onto the sensor, film, or a wall where an artist could sketch or paint the projected scene. Compared to modern photographs taken with
Over time I’ve been fortunate to have been able to shoot with almost every type of film and digital camera imaginable. The funny thing is, out of all of them, the camera that to this day amazes me the most is a pinhole camera I made out of a shoe box. Best part? I used it to photograph a magazine story and (thank goodness) the editors loved the results.
All Photographs © Allan Weitz 2020
Pinhole cameras are as basic as it gets. A darkened box with a pinhole on one side and a piece of photosensitive paper or film on the opposite side of the
There is something magical about creating an image from a tiny amount of light that traveled through the smallest of holes—regardless of whether the image is captured on film or on a modern digital camera sensor. Pinhole photography is, arguably, the purest form of the art and, if you can mentally handle the fact that you are embarking on a voyage that runs counter to all of your wide-aperture-super-expensive-no-digital-noise digital aspirations, it is a