Pinholing It!

I read an article just the other day that pointed out that although the high tech electronics of today’s DSLR’s may fail, memory cards may become corrupt or even obsolete, and the mechanics of all mechanical film cameras may break and be rendered useless in time , a simple box with a pinhole is forever!

There is an elemental beauty in a simple pinhole camera. The first one I made was from a cardboard kit that I cut out and glued together. I still have it and it works fine with any standard 35mm film stock. 

The photo above was taken with that little cardboard camera using Kodak Ektar color film.

The only reason I wanted and eventually got another pinhole camera was so I could use 120 film and explore the larger format. I bought a Holga pinhole camera for that, a cheap, plastic toy camera with a pinhole instead of a lens. It does have a mechanical shutter that will eventually break and when it does I can just remove the shutter and simply use the lens cap as a shutter because most exposures are so long that a shutter really isn’t needed.

A couple months ago I received another Holga pinhole camera as a gift. The WPC, or wide pinhole camera this time. The WPC is still a cheap, plastic pinhole camera but this one will allow you to shoot 120 roll film in a wide 6x9, or super wide 6x12 format (the regular Holga pinhole camera shoots 6x4.5 or 6x6). I still haven’t shot with it but am looking forward to doing so this week.

I am a bit of a camera Geek I suppose, and I like to “play” with a number of different cameras and gadgets so I will likely accumulate other pinhole cameras over time. That said, I pretty much have everything I need to take a variety of pinhole photographs with what I have already. I have researched the various films available and their properties. I have studied the work of other pinhole photographers. And I have experimented with several rolls of film over the past 2 or 3 years and I have some creative ideas so there’s really not much left to do but to go out and make some pictures and that is exactly what I intend to do. Stay Tuned!