A useful Christmas present has given me the opportunity to try something that I have always wanted to try, namely pinhole photography.

The camera is a Holga pinhole camera, with a laser cut pinhole equivalent to f/135, which works out at a diameter of about one-third of a millimetre. The focal length, if a pinhole has such a thing, is approximately 50 mm which with a 12 cm x 6 cm image on 120 film gives a horizontal angle of view of 120 degrees, although as you will see this is heavily vignetted.

I used the camera for the first time on a foggy day on the North Norfolk coast, which required exposure times of up to two minutes and forty seconds. Being foggy there was no wind which meant that there was no movement during the exposure, although I had to be careful not to move the camera as I did not have a cable release and the camera does not have any method of holding the shutter open other than keeping your finger on the button. I used my camera phone as an exposure meter and, made use of the zone system to estimate the necessary exposure.

The results are below:

The resulting images are not that sharp, although I was not expecting much. I found the film rather grainy, but that may be partially a result of grain aliasing in the scanning process. I have found this with other negatives that I have scanned where the scan appears to show more grain than an optical print. I have applied some corrections and sharpening to the images above, but I think that due to the grain, the opportunity for sharpening is limited. The vignetting is quite heavy and I believe this would be improved by making a pinhole from a thinner material. A smaller pinhole could improve the definition but it would suffer from more diffraction, so perhaps the fixed pinhole in the Holga camera is about the sweet spot. I will have to do some research on the subject.

As I have some infrared film remaining from my infrared film experiments, I may try and combine the techniques. I will have to devise some sort of filter holder in order to do this as the camera does not have a filter ring.

List of Illustrations

Fig 1: Bainbridge, G. (2025) The Coal Barn 2 mins 40 secs at f/135. At: http://bainb.com/wp/mpt/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/01/002-2b136a.jpg
Fig 2: Bainbridge, G. (2025) Thornham Harbour 1 min 30 secs at f/135. At: http://bainb.com/wp/mpt/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/01/001-79038a.jpg
Fig 3: Bainbridge, G. (2025) Thornham ruins 1 min 30 secs at f/135. At: http://bainb.com/wp/mpt/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/01/004-af4c8a.jpg
Fig 4: Bainbridge, G. (2025) Thornham 1 min 30 secs at f/135. At: http://bainb.com/wp/mpt/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/01/005-2c51da.jpg