Holga HPL-P (Pinhole) for Pentax DSLR?

I explained what this gadget is in my last blog post (essentially a pinhole mounted in a plastic Pentax K-Mount lens barrel instead of an actual lens which can be used on Pentax SLR’s & DSLR’s) and noted that it was actually designed to be used with a Pentax crop frame (APS-C) DSLR sensor rather than a full frame or 35mm DSLR or film camera.

In the image above I used a Pentax istDL DSLR and we see that the image fills the frame completely. There is some slight vignetting but what we have here is pretty typical of pinholes in general unlike the severe effect seen in my last post in the picture shot with a 35mm SLR.

This image was shot at ISO 800 using a ½ second shutter speed and the same estimated f133 aperture. In post processing I brightened it up and tweaked the color balance a little. I also had to go in and remove the black spots that resulted from dust on the sensor.

Apparently this is a common problem when using pinholes on digital cameras.  Since the pinhole has an infinite depth of field and renders everything in focus from the sensor itself to infinity even the dust on the sensor shows up in the image. This isn’t a problem with a lens because the depth of field of the lens does not include the sensor.

The results here using a crop frame DSLR are a little better than with the 35mm camera noted in my last blog post but I am still a bit disappointed in the overall performance of this little gadget.  Nothing I have done with it so far comes close to the image quality of any of my other pinholes. Even the little Home-made 35mm cardboard pinhole camera creates better images.

Well, I am still on the quest for a better (than my little cardboard) 35mm pinhole camera so my next experiment may just have to be to make my own pinhole, mount it in a body cap and see how that works on one of my SLR’s. Stay tuned!