WPPD Pinhole Photo Submission

Here’s another one of the pinhole photos I took on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. This is actually one of my favorites but not the one I ended up submitting to the web site. I submitted the very first picture I took – the same one I posted on the blog last week. It seemed appropriate somehow.

Here’s the link if you would like to see it and check out the other 2000+ entries while you’re there. 

http://www.pinholeday.org/gallery/2012/index.php?id=2585

My entry is number 2585. As of right now there are 2633 photos on the WPPD web site and with another two weeks left to submit entries the 2012 gallery could easily surpass last year’s total of 3386 photos.

Be careful though. If you start looking at these pinhole photos you may find yourself there for hours at a time. It’s really quite addictive!

Extreme Picture Taking Made Easy

As much as I love shooting with film there are some areas where the new digital technology excels. 

Everyone knows it is extremely difficult to take great pictures in extremely low light situations. It’s also more difficult to take good pictures from a distance when you have to “zoom” in or use telephoto lenses. Combine low light with having to zoom in on your subject and oh, while you at it, have your subject moving around all the time – like kids dancing on a stage 200+ feet away in a dark auditorium! 

In the old days a picture like this could only be taken with an extremely fast (and expensive) telephoto lens and high speed (ISO) film. I have occasionally gotten lucky and taken pictures like this with fairly “normal” equipment and film – but not often.

The shot above was taken at my grand daughters’ dance review with a handheld Nikon P-300 set on automatic mode and the camera zoomed nearly all the way out. I was sitting in an almost completely dark auditorium at least 200 feet away from the poorly lighted stage the kids were dancing on. Flashes were prohibited and at that distance wouldn’t have done any good anyway. 

The camera selected f/5 and 1/25^th of a second shutter speed with an ISO of 800, used  “Pattern” metering with the onboard image stabilization activated.

Could I have gotten this picture using my 35mm – probably, but not that easily!

Pinhole Preview

Okay the results are in. Amazingly, all of my pinhole camera pictures came out – every one of them. Naturally some are better than others but the fact that my very first roll of film was a resounding success is incredibly satisfying.

The Darkroom processed the film and scanned it with the “holes” showing giving it kind of a trippy look. Now the hard part starts. I have to decide which one to submit to the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD) web site.

The picture above showing a view of my front yard was one of the very first pictures I took.

I used Kodak Portra 160 film. The aperture of my pinhole camera is estimated to be f133 and I selected the correct shutter speed by using the light meter in my 35mm SLR to get a reading and then used a conversion table I found on the WPPD web site. From there I bracketed as I felt necessary.

I will post the actual WPPD as well selection as soon as I pick it out.

Ceramic Pinhole Cameras?

Steve Irvine has been into pottery for over 40 years but says he spends almost as much time with photography as he does with pottery. It should come as no surprise then to find the two come together at some point. Check out his web site using the link below and see his amazing ceramic pinhole cameras.

http://www.steveirvine.com/ceramic_cameras.html

These ceramic creations are not only beautiful, they are also fully functional pinhole cameras. On his web site he includes links to show pictures taken with each camera. He also has a link to another site that’s just about his pinhole photography and yet another link to a site where he shows you how to make a ceramic camera.

It’s all great stuff and easy to get lost in his art. Thanks to “I Still Shoot Film.org” for digging up this golden nugget.

To SLR or not to SLR – Pentax K-01?

I have become fascinated with the Pentax K-01. Having used an SLR since the 1970’s I just naturally always assumed that an SLR or DSLR was necessary for “serious” photography but I recently discovered that Pentax has come out with a new non-SLR interchangeable lens camera that may offer serious photographers another alternative.

Most photo reviewers so far have compared the K-01 to other non-SLR interchangeable lens cameras but unlike most of them the Pentax K-01 uses the same full size APS-C CMOS sensor that is used in the K-5, Pentax’s top of the line DSLR.  To be fair Sony, Fuji and a couple others also make interchangeable lens cameras with similar sized sensors and some of them even have viewers so that are almost 21^st century rangefinders.

Now the ASP-C sensor is not the same size as a 35mm negative of course. Sensor’s that big are only found in a handful high end “professional” DSLR’s costing thousands of dollars but the APS-C sensor has become the new standard for most DSLR’s. With 16MB resolution these sensors are capable of producing images approaching the state of the art for 35mm film produced images. 

Technology being what it is I would expect to see 20+ MB APS-C sensors become commonplace shortly. At that point pictures produced by these sensors should be every bit as good as those produced by the best 35mm cameras.

What that really means is that the Pentax K-01 may be considered a viable tool for the professional photographer looking for a smaller lighter camera.

The K-01 has a couple other things going for it too. Because Pentax designed it to use the K lens mount it can not only utilize the wide selection of lenses available for all the Pentax DSLR’s, it can also use every K mount lens produced for Pentax K mount cameras over the past 40 years. Naturally legacy lenses can only be used in manual mode

The K-01 is also smaller & cheaper than comparably equipped DSLRs, doesn’t go “klunk” every time you push the shutter and if all that that isn’t enough, it’s unique design is the work of the world famous designer, Mark Newson.  Frankly, I never heard of Mark Newson but I do kind of like the look of the Pentax K-01. I think I’ll take mine in basic black instead of his “signature” yellow though.

No, I’m not going to rush out and buy one. I still shoot film (remember), but I am going to try to find one in a store somewhere to play with and if it feels as good as it looks I may end up with one eventually, especially if Pentax comes out with an upgraded 20+ MB sensor for it. After all, as I have said on this blog over and over I am not anti-digital I just haven’t found the right digital camera yet.