Tuesday 13 March 2007

A box with a hole... the fascinating world of the pinhole camera...

With the modern digital camera its very easy to become complacent about making images... the camera can focus, meter, judge colour temperature, sharpen, add contrast etc.. etc... perfect photo's almost all the time no..???

How about a camera that uses film (oh no not the f word..!), has no shutter button, you can't focus it.. hell... it doesn't even have a lens... just a very small hole... welcome to the world of the pinhole camera.


Exposure times in bright sunlight with a slow film can be measured in tens of seconds and as the sun goes down you could be talking hours to expose the film correctly... issues with Reciprocity failure, colour shifts, grain... and you can't even see what you got until the film comes back from the lab...!.. Why oh why would anyone use such a god forsaken contraption... Because you can create wonderful ethereal images, images that no amount of photoshop trickery can produce, they are not perfect and that's exactly their beauty...


If your a bit of a DIY expert you can even make one yourself (like this guy who built one from a 150 year old child's skull !!), if not, then you can go to Zero Image who have an entire range to choose from...


And for those of you who can't bear the thought of having to use film, you can even turn your digital SLR into a pinhole...

Recommended Galleries and reading :

Isabelle Lousberg...
Zeb Andrews...
Mackeson...
The Pinhole Resource...

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