Anybody doing pinhole with their 4/3rds cameras?

[Jack]

Just curious, any pinhole images to share? I am getting an itch to build a pinhole lens for my GF1 and curious how it may work...

 

[photoSmart42]

I've been wondering the same thing myself. Here's a link I found with some pinhole photos on the EP: http://cgi.ebay.com/Skink-Pinhole-Pancake-Creative-Kit-M4%2F3-E-P1-P2-GF1-GH1_W0QQitemZ380212163997QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20100307?IMSfp=TL1003071610007r36793

 

[Jack]

I may cobble one together this evening and try it out later this week --- all it will cost me if it fails is a 1/2 hour of my time and a body cap

 

[Terry]

Just curious, any pinhole images to share? I am getting an itch to build a pinhole lens for my GF1 and curious how it may work...

Jack,
Woody has his pinhole attachment for the M9 and he has a GF1. If he has an M -> m4/3 adapter he may be able to test it out for you.

 

[Jack]

LOL! It was Woody's pinhole set-up at Salton that got me to dig my MF pinhole out of the bottom of my bag! Of course it was the resulting images that got me thinking about setting up the GF1!

FWIW, I did a little estimating and it appears a 0.2mm aperture would be about ideal for a lenscap position on the GF1 and I may have something close at home. Here is a 0.2mm disk on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/Skink-laser-drilled-pinhole-aperture-0-2mm-for-Leica_W0QQitemZ290392886751QQ

 

[Terry]

Well,
You were the pioneer for the IR conversion (which is fabulous and I love it). Perhaps you can make more than one and market your pinhole kits.

 

[Jack]

I think you'd be better off just buying the Skink m4/3rds kit Dragos linked to above unless you already have a spare lenscap and aperture.

 

[pellicle]

Hi

yeah, I'm quite the pinhole fan actually ... so naturally I tried it on the G1 as soon as I got it ... the prolem is that the sensor is small and therefore your "enlargement" from that 18x14mm square causes the image to suffer. For example:


note dust specks


wheras working with 6x12cm film area you can get this:


(click either for larger)

so while I like pinhole with my 4x5 and my ultralight Holga pinhole (the best holga made, the one with no lens ;-)

 

[tmessenger]

Speaking of body caps I have an extra new OEM Olympus M3/4 body cap $8 shipped in the USA. Works on all M4/3 cameras.

Tim

 

[Jack]

After I got home last night, I searched through my cabinet and found a few apertures that looked promising for the GF1, a 0.15mm and 0.22mm. I figured the 0.22mm hole should generate about an f100 pinhole which should be pretty decent on the smaller sensor of the GF1. So after about 20 minutes of work, this is what I had cobbled together:

As soon as it gets a bit lighter outside, I'll shoot a few test shots and post them --- though I have to admit that Pellicle's post above does not lend very much hope...

 

[Jack]

Okay, the Sun just popped out here, so I grabbed a shot of a familiar item (at least for US residents) from the back of my office building. It's not a great subject or image, but I think shows some promise for 4/3rds pinhole -- yeah!

PS: I can view through the LCD just fine, so composition is pretty easy! The exposure was handheld at 1/10th sec at ISO 400 and this was about 1 stop underexposed -- my point here is the set-up may be marginally handholdable at higher ISO.

 

[Jack]

PS: I've received a few PM's about the cap, so thought I'd elaborate. First off, the "huge" hole is NOT the pinhole, it is simply a hole cut in the cap to make a clear path to the pinhole aperture disk mounted to the underside of the cap, and big enough so I can see to center the pinhole as I mounted it. I mounted the aperture by using a piece of black gaffer tape with a tiny hole in it for the aperture stuck to the inside of the cap. I did this to reduce internal reflections form the shiny disk. Here is an enlarged crop of the aperture itself, so you can see how tiny the pinhole is in relation to the cap -- the little black dot in the center of the foil is the pinhole:

 

[Gio]

Hello Jack,

once a year a try making pinhole images with a skink pinhole on my L1 for the Worldwide Pinhole Day (http://www.pinholeday.org/).





Regards
Johannes

 

[Jack]

Johannes,

I like both those images -- But I have to admit to being a fan of "smiling stairs" and photograph them myself at most every opportunity

 

[Amin]

These folks are trying to get something together which looks high quality but not yet available (and may not become available unless they get $5000 in pre-orders): http://wanderlustcameras.com/

 

[monkeyking]

That wanderlust pinhole video of the pinball machine is incredible. They must have had to pump a lot of light onto that machine to get an exposure.

 

[kds315]

The sensor is way to small to produce useable results IMHO (also as was mentioned above). Tried it on my GH1 but was not impressed.

 

[jwestra]

I do like the wide-angle (11mm) pinhole a lot more. What is the angle of a "lenscap pinhole". Can you recess the aperture further into the body?

 

[Amin]

The folks at Wanderlust kindly sent me a prototype of their pinhole cap. I haven't had any time to give it a good tryout, but here are a couple quick snaps:

The first was handheld at ISO 800, 1/8s. The second was a 60-second exposure. Both processed with Lightroom defaults other than increased contrast (which makes the vignetting more noticeable).

 

[woodmancy]

Looks very interesting Amin - keep us posted

Keith