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Hi Pentaxian friends.
This lens will cost you less that $5.00. The results are akin to old cameras, but in color. Have you ever used a medium format plastic Holga camera? The results are somewhat similar. The Holga lens is made of plastic, but our lens has better "see through" quality than the best Carl Zeiss lenses. One disadvantage may be that it comes with one aperture on each lens, and the aperture is very small. In all likelihood, you will have to use a tripod. This is a prime lens, but it can be turned to a telephoto lens easily. It will take so little space in your camera bag, that it will make the Pentax Pancake Limited lenses look enormous. It has a good reputation of being a great lens for street photography and with a little practice, you can turn ordinary street photographs to extraordinary emotion filled images.
Of course, the quality of the images taken will not be as good as what Pentax prime and DA* lenses can produce. However, it's winter and in most parts of the Country it's cold and many of us don't take that many pictures in winter anyway. We all need some projects for winter shooting. So now, we're almost ready to divulge what is that very economical lens that has better "see through" quality that the best Carl Zeiss lenses.
It's a pinhole, home-made lens. With a DSLR, pinhole shooting becomes as modern as can be. The results are as instantaneous as your DRLS can display it on the LCD monitor. It's really easy to make your own, although some fancy assembly can be purchased. What you need is a Pentax camera body cap, and one small piece of aluminum foil or brass shim. Drill a hole measuring about 1/2 inch in diameter in the body cap. Take the smallest needle you can find, and gently pierce a hole in the foil. Note that the smaller the hole, the better the image will be. Cut the foil so that it can easily fit inside the body cap. Tape the foil inside the body cap, making sure the small hole is located in the center. That's it, you have a pinhole lens. A flashgun in ‘full power’ manual mode can be used to illuminate a subject up to about 6”away. Two advantages of flash are; not having to worry about camera shake, and extreme contrast which adds to the apparent sharpness of the image.You want to make it a telephoto lens, simply use extendion tubes. Because the image circle gets larger as the distance between the pinhole and the sensor increases...you get an instant telephoto. The DSLR will have to be used in manual mode for the shutter speed, but the auto-focus is not necessary as the lens renders images equally focused Try it, you will have a blast.
Good references on pinhole.
6 comments:
Interesting!
Do you have some tricks to center the pinhole in the cap? Would it have some caracteristics of the view camera if you place the hole off center?
Chris,
The caps usually have a logo on the inside, right in the center. Actually, even if the pinhole is not exactly dead center, it will work just fine.
What a great idea, will try and keep you posted on results
maxd,
I would like to have sample pictures from you or anyone doing the pinhole project.I could post all the best shots from everyone sending a picture.
pentaxdslrs.blogspot.com; You saved my day again.
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