I gave my DIY Sharan WideAngle pinhole camera another try and I didn’t do that much better than the first time. I love the wideness of it and the slowness of shooting with a pinhole but it’s obvious I am having a major case of lightleaks. I will try this camera again and I will plug it up with a whole lot of tape and prayer.
Anybody have any experience with makes a pinhole camera 100% lightproof?
Notice how the long exposure turns people into phantoms. Also see below
I went out on a hot hot Saturday to fill up some lingering rolls of film. At this Hindu Temple in Chinatown I shot with 3 different camera’s from across the street. As you can see I have horrible orientation with regards to a straight horizon.
What immediately jumps out is the extreme wideness of the Sprocket Rocket, I’m sure I could have included my dirty sneakers if I wanted to. When you put on a 30mm lens on a panoramic camera lens you get a 106 degrees of view. According to Wikipedia the human vision span is 120 degrees and most of that is peripheral vision. So as soon as I’m able to stuff some film in my brain, I’m ready to upgrade. Probably some Kodak Ektar.
Looking at the Holga plus wideangle adapter also gives you a wider view, but a considerable drop off in sharpness everywhere except the very center of the image. I know sharpness isn’t something that is emphasized when shooting with a toy camera with a plastic lens but it something to note.
At lastly there is the Lubitel 2, the only camera with a glass lens out of the three. A much more narrower field of vision and also more sharper result. No drop off in sharpness quality around the edges of the image. Pretty solid.
There you go, a quick and dirty comparison of 3 camera’s.
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I shot a roll of lomo 100 X-pro in my holga to review that type of film and this new wide lens adapter. I ran out of my usual electrical tape that I use to keep my holga lightleak tight and in one piece. I picked up a new roll of regular black tape and obviously it did a very bad job, in fact it did such a horrible job I wonder if it sneaked in its photon buddies and let them go to town on my film resulting in horrendous orange light leaks all over my pictures.
I could make up a story that this was my artistic intention in order to portray the fragility of perfection and the honesty of failure but that would be a big bowl of shit. So lets get to the review.
The top part is the regular Holga Lens and the bottom image is with the converter. I picked up this converter for $13 on Ebay because I was interested in buying the latest lomo camera: the sprocket rocket.
The main advantage the sprocket rocket has over shooting 35mm in a Holga is its wide angle lens and the ease of forwarding the film without having to deal with counting clicks. I was wondering if this converter would be wide enough to dissuade me from buying the sprocket rocket and stay loyal to my 5 year old Holga. After looking at the results I can honestly say “I don’t know”
It does create a wider image, that is the positive. The bad side is that the normally blurry edges of my Holga images are now even more distorted and vague.
But it is hard to judge this lens just one roll of film which was badly abused by lightleaks. I will have to give this lens another chance before I pass my judgment upon it and then decide if I want to add the sprocket rocket to my collection of cameras.
Kodak Tri-X 400, black and white film. Released in the 1940′s and according to the Kodak website “the world’s best selling black and white film”. This is a classic film and hardly in need of a review. So I won’t. Here are my pictures. Taken with a Canon SLR and 50mm. It was incredibly grainy though, I have shot with this film before and this is the first time I got such results.
This was my first experience building a camera. It was an anniversary gift from my thoughtful girlfriend. Sadly the package only came with a Japanese only manual, but thanks to the this amazing set of connected tubes called the internet I was able to contact somebody at Sharan and get the English PFD instructions.
I put on some relaxing music and went to work. It took about one hour to put everything together and I was very careful not to touch the plate with the actual pinhole worried I would plug it up with some piece of dead skin or something.
I threw in Agfa Vista 100 film and went on my merry way to Haw Par Villa. It was my first time shooting with a pinhole and I didn’t feel like using a tripod so I just had to look around to find stable platforms because of the 4 to 5 second recommended exposure.
After picking up my scans I immediately noticed light leaks and some more light leaks. I had to do my best to contain these red streaks, but I did fire up another roll in my pinhole for another round of photos.
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A couple of years after shooting for a while with a 18-75 lens on my Canon 350D I wanted something wider. My budget didn’t allow for a true wide-angle lens and on Ebay I found a compromise. Most reviews I found were quite dismissive with bad lens quality being the common piece of criticism. I don’t see myself as a pixel peeper and went ahead and ordered this $45 lens converter from Bower. It’s a piece of glass that goes over your standard lens using step-up or step-down rings. The wide-angle conversion rate is 0.42 so my 18-75mm lens becomes 8.1-34mm.
This lens does transform whatever lens you have into a wide-angle view. For those looking for a toy-like camera lens, like those people buying Holga and Diana lenses for DSLR’s this lens has certain qualities that give it that toy plastic lens feeling. These qualities are certain discolorations and vignetting. This lens did allow me to take one of my most popular self-portraits on flickr.
Like mentioned above, this lens does have heavy discoloration, vignetting and putting another piece of glass On my lens makes it slower and less sharp. If I want a clean image it takes quite some post-processing to get there.
Crank up your aperture to at least f9, this will increase your depth of field and increase your chances of having your subject in focus.
If you want a lens that give your DSLR a feel and look of toycamera wideangle this lens converter is perfect. If this is not the case, I would steer clear and save up money until you can afford a true wideangle lens.
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