Digital Pinhole

A couple years ago I got a Holga HPL-P “pinhole lens” for my Pentax K mount cameras and I have been less than satisfied with it. First I discovered it was really set up for digital “crop frame” or APS-C cameras so that when I used it with a 35mm film (full frame body) it did not fill the frame but left the image in a little circle in the middle of the frame.

Then I tried it with my Pentax digital camera (I was using an istDL at the time) and was not impressed at all. The image quality was nothing to get excited about and unlike most true pinhole cameras the focal length was such that the field of view was essentially the same as a standard 50mm lens.

Fast forward to today – these days I am shooting with a Pentax KS-1 and I decided to try the HPL-P again. The focal length and field of view is still the same but the much more advanced sensor and processor in the KS-1 does a much better job so that with minimal tweaking in post processing I ended up with the amazingly sharp and clear and colorful image shown above.

I am still of the opinion that film is better for shooting pinhole and that the wide angle, infinite depth of field effect of traditional pinhole images is what it is all about but I have to admit the images resulting from my latest efforts with this “lens” and DSLR combination is very pleasing.

This makes me want to play with digital pinhole some more.

35mm Rocks!

I know I have been extolling the virtues of 110 film lately and even posted a couple things about digital but 35mm has been and continues to be the King of film formats. So here’s a shot from a couple months ago that I really like. It was taken with my Pentax ZX-7 on Kodak Portra 400 color negative film.

Now if I am being honest, the ZX-7 is probably my favorite 35mm SLR. I also have a ZX-L that I like the “feel” of and it is a great camera, probably a little better build than the ZX-7 but the ZX-7 just works for me. I can shoot on full auto, programed auto, aperture preferred, shutter preferred or fully manual. Coupled with a 28-80 zoom (I’ve been wanting to get a 28 -90 but just haven’t found one at a reasonable price yet) it is about as close to an all-purpose 35mm SLR as you could want. It even has a decent pop up flash.

As for film, Portra 400 has a beautiful color balance, just enough speed to cover the gamut of shooting scenarios and just does almost everything I want a film to do. Now don’t misunderstand what I am saying. There are other great films out there. I love Ektar for shooting pinhole. Velvia is a beautiful film to experiment with, and of course my all-time favorite black & white film – Tri-X. But for color negative film to cover any contingency I find myself coming back again and again to Portra.

All that to address the all important question, “if you had to be stuck somewhere/anywhere” (you fill in that blank)  with only one film camera and only one film – what would it be?

For me, it would most likely be the Pentax ZX-7 loaded with Kodak Portra 400. 

Pentax K-S1

One of the best surprises so far with the new Pentax K-S1 I got for Christmas is the way is does “in-camera” black & white jpegs! Being a film guy and a lover of Kodak Tri-X film I have intentionally avoided black & white with digital because it always looks, well, bland.

I know you can do all kinds of things with post processing but I like taking pictures, not sitting in front of a computer. I already do enough of that. My photography is intended to give me a break from that so I always shoot color jpeg images with digital and if I want black & white I use one of my film cameras loaded with Tri-X.

That said, I was delighted to find that there is at least one of the three black & white settings on the K-S1 that results in amazing black & white images.  To find it go to “MENU 1”   “Custom Image” and select “BW.”

There is a “Bold Monochrome” setting available in another place in the menu and another on the control ring under “Effects” but those have too much contrast and not enough gray tones for my taste.

I don’t want to take away anything from this little (and I do mean little) camera’s ability to produce fantastic color images. Like most Pentax DSLR’s it excels there too, but I am delighted to finally find a digital that can produce the kind of black & white images I like.

What I like is totally black blacks, white whites and an abundant assortment of grays in between. In the film world Kodak Tri-X delivers this faithfully but in my experience the Pentax K-S1 is the first DSLR to achieve this.

No doubt I will have much more to say about this camera in future posts but this is what caught my attention the first couple times I used the camera.

More 110

Here’s another shot taken with the Minolta 460Tx on Lomo Tiger color negative film. The image quality is excellent for such a small negative and the color from the Lomo Tiger film is great. I really don’t know why the shots from this camera seem so much better than the supposedly higher quality 110 cameras I have tried previously but this little camera could easily become one of my favorites if my tests continue to result in these kind of photos.

Next roll I will shoot some with the flash and see how that works out. Stay tuned!

110 Film Rocks Again!

I always thought that 110 film resulted in pretty crappy pictures going all the way back to my early experiences in the 1970’s but I have been dabbling with it again off and on for the last couple years hoping for better results.

My first try was with the smallest SLR ever produced, the Pentax Auto 110. Unfortunately the first roll of film through this little jewel broke the film advance and so ended my experimenting with 110. The partial roll I tried to take pictures with was developed and while the images were better than I remembered 110 being they were not nearly as good as 35mm.

My second attempt was with a Rollei A110. This robust little camera has thus far has refused to break even when a pesky roll of film got stuck and threatened to do the same thing to it that happened to the Pentax.  Again the images were much better than what I remembered from the 1970’s but still not up to par with 35mm or even current digital point & shoot cameras. My biggest complaint about the Rollei however, is that it is just too small to hold, carry and operate comfortably. I always feel awkward using it for some reason.

Still, I have to confess there is something more than nostalgia that kept me thinking that there was a 110 film camera that could produce reasonably good quality images while maintaining the 110 film mystique that captured a generation of photo enthusiasts and be comfortable and reliable to use.

Enter the Minolta 460Tx! This is a diminutive slab of a camera I stumbled across at Goodwill and picked up for less than $10. Looking like so many of the 1970’s vintage 110’s the Minolta 460Tx has two lenses (one normal and one telephoto), three apertures, one shutter speed, zone focusing and of course a built in flash. The image quality is excellent while still having whatever it is that makes 110, 110.

The image above was shot on Lomo Tiger which, as it turns out, is an excellent color negative film for these little cameras producing sharp and very colorful photos. Maybe I have finally found “MY” 110 camera!  Only time and more rolls of film will tell for sure.

Photo Professional

Here’s a shot of a couple guys hard at work. I don’t generally consider myself a professional photographer although I am occasionally paid for my work. When this happens this is the kind of pictures I am usually taking.

Actually, the one below is more typical. The one above was one I shot because it was just a great shot even though it had no technical value to the project at hand.

I do not want to diminish the value of artistic or creative photography but there is also a practical side of photography. Whether we’re dealing with equipment installation like this or some other more mundane image like damage to a vehicle after an accident or the contents of your house for an insurance claim, the ability to accurately capture an image that documents or records something is an always useful and necessary tool.

B&B through a Pinhole

Above is one of the images shot at the Natchez B&B I mentioned in my last blog post. Shot on Kodak Ektar film with the Holga Pinhole Camera, this was the view of the fountain in the courtyard seen when looking through the window of our suite’s sitting room. I spent a fair amount of time just staring out this window. It was a delightful scene just begging to be immortalized on film so I obliged it.

I did not record the exposure time but I was using the “Light Meter Tools” app on my android phone to determine the correct exposure. I believe it was in the 1 to 2 second range. This little app seems to work perfectly except that it is 1.5 stops off. I determined this by comparing it to the light meter readings in my other cameras. The good news is that the app allows you to make an overriding exposure compensation setting to easily account for this. 

I know a lot of folks make a big deal about pinhole exposure times and bracketing every shot but I have come to trust my little meter app and my own judgement enough that I rarely take more than one shot of each image. If I do end up with any less than desirable images (and I do) it is not because the exposure was incorrect. Of course, the film I generally use in my pinhole cameras (Ektar, Portra & Tri-X) also has a pretty wide latitude.

My goal is to simplify the pinhole photography process to the point where it is easy enough to do it all the time. When I started I was carrying around at least one other camera to use for metering, a clipboard with notebook & pencil and a couple exposure & conversion charts, and the camera mounted on a tripod with a cable release. In those days it would sometimes take me 15 to 20 minutes to get a shot and I would bracket. I was happy if I got two or three images from a roll of film.

Now, with my handy dandy light meter app, I still carry the pinhole camera on a tripod with a cable release although I am just as likely to lock the shutter open and just use the lens cap for longer exposures. I may have another camera with me at times but it is for shooting not just for a second opinion on the exposure times, and I don’t need the notebook and the conversion charts anhymore.

I do miss the notebook and I can never remember my exposures so I may resume bringing it along to record my exposures for each frame.

The good news is that while pinhole photography remains a very contemplative and purposeful version “slow photography” I can now frequently get off shots in just a minute or two making the whole process more fun and productive. Also, I typically get several good shots per roll since I am not having to bracket everything.