Sunday, May 21, 2017

WPPD 2017 & The Ondu

Well its Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD) time again! Actually WPPD was on April 30th this year but I just got my film & scans back, picked out the one I wanted to post to the WPPD website and got it uploaded. The image shown above is the one I selected. It is an 8 second exposure on Kodak Portra 400 shot with the new Ondu 35mm Pocket Pinhole acquired last year through their most recent Kickstarter campaign.


It is a delightful compact little camera hand crafted from the most beautiful wood. This was the very first roll of film I put through it and was generally pleased with the results. My biggest complaint is the shutter. This is basically just a piece of wood that pivots up and down across the pinhole and works fine except it is very easy to not get it open all the way or to get your hand and fingers in the way when opening and closing. For longer exposures this is not a big deal but for short exposures it can create a brown blur at the periphery of the image. Here’s a picture of Ondu.
In the future I will use this camera with slower film and/or select compositions that require longer exposures so that I can take the time to make sure the shutter is completely open. Anything longer than 10 seconds should be fine for this strategy. That way even if the shutter arm is in the way briefly it will not affect the image.