Having read about pinhole photography, I decided to give it a try. Afterall, it is inexpensive, since the camera has no lens; just a small pinhole. The pinhole size varies from camera to camera. Mine is equalivalent to an f/235 and the angle of view is said to be that of a  40mm lens. Since the camera uses 120 roll (medium format) film, that is a significant wide angle lens equivalent, especially when you take into account the format is 6x9cm. A normal lens for that format is 105mm.

The camera itself is REAL basic. Not light meter, no finder, no shutter other than a wood piece you slide to uncover the hole and slide back to cover it up again. No automatic film advance. You have to watch the back of the camera to make sure which number image you are advancing to, just like we did with the old Kodak Brownie cameras.

It was amazing to me that you can obtain an image without a lens to focus the light onto the film plane, but as I read about these types of cameras, that was how  cameras originated.  What is more amazing is the depth of field. There basically is none-it is all in focus. The blur you see in this image was, I believe, the result of the fact this was a time exposure of about 15 seconds (remember the f stop is 235) and the waterfall was literally a torrent that was stirring the leaves on the trees, because I had the camera secured on a tripod.

The waterfall, by the way,  is known as Lake Falls and is located at Mathiessen State Park which adjoins Starved Rock State Park in north central Illinois near Ottawa and Utica, Illinois.

Had I been using a slower film other than the 800 ISO Kodak Portra film, the exposure time would have been much longer.

I will continue to experiment with this type of pinhole image and will post them on my website, skiphupp.com, on a page entitled Pinhole Images which can be accessed by first clicking on the Archives link on the first page of my website.

Skip Hupp