Just maxed out your credit card for a £5,850 Leica M10 and can‘t afford a lens? All is not lost, so read on. The Pinilux-M is the obvious solution. It transforms your M10 into a camera obscura and is infinitely superior to a cardboard box and a pinhole. It’s a Leica hole, after all, and that places it well above your ordinary common or garden hole. Yes, folks, no need to be a Billy No Lens, salvation is at hand and you don’t need to admit you can’t afford a genuine Leica lens with glass in it.
Ivor Cooper at Red Dot Cameras in London handed me the Pinilux on a recent visit. Would I like to test it? “I want it back, mind,” he said sternly as I pocketed the box. Sometimes, a visit to Red Dot is akin to entering a Ripley‘s Believe it or Not museum, you never quite know what will be produced from Ivor’s hat.
The Pinilux is one very superior pinhole lens. It’s a pancake to out crepe all others. Painstakingly crafted from bio-degradable plastic, the Pinilux is fitted with a stainless steel optic, finely penetrated by the slenderest of micro drills. It definitely has the whiff of Peter Karbe about it.
Specification is a bit of a mystery, though, because I don‘t know the aperture, still less the focal length. Let‘s call it a 24mm f/90. Lightroom guesses f/32 but I suspect that could well be a figment of its electronic imagination. Thing is, the Pinilux-M works — after a fashion. And it is probably easier to use on an automatic digital M than on older film camerasJust set your speed to auto and let the lens do the rest. Trying to work out a manual exposure not knowing the aperture is a bit iffy at the best of times.
It’s a handy Lenslet to keep in a forgotten corner of your camera bag for the day when you go out into the world having forgotten to attach a lens to your camera. It happens. Forget the Noctilux, the humble 35mm Summicron or some fancy Apo thingumajig. If you don’t have them with you it’s tough. No, the best lens is the one you have with you, even though it be Pinilux-M.
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The Pinilux-M must be the ultimate in minimalism. It has undoubted benefits. For one thing, this must be the perfect lens for street photography. It’s all hyperfocal, this lens. Is there any other way? And it‘s sooo easy to use. No aperture to worry about, no fiddly focus ring — don‘t even bother with the rangefinder, the lens has one built in. Everything is perfect, first time round. In fact, I wonder why we bother with lenses at all. Admittedly with its guestimated f/90 aperture the Pinilux is a bit challenging in adverse lighting conditions. It’s good for outdoor stuff, though, and I was achieving speeds of up to 1/125s with an auto ISO of 12,500. Using a tripod would have perhaps steadied things up for a slower shot with lower ISO, but what the heck. What more could you wish for?
I tried the lens on the Leica SL (with adapter) as well as on the M10. I think it performs slightly better on the SL than on the M10 but it’s a closely run thing.
Bokeh
Bokeh? Yes, well. This lens has fabulous bokeh. In fact, the Pinilux is all about bokeh because you don’t get much else. In terms of sharpness, this is clearly no 50mm Apo-Summicron. I‘d rate it as soft and, in black and white, the images have a curious vintage look. They‘re not much different to the results from the Kodak Vest Pocket camera sported by my friend William “Fox Talbot” Fagan.
The Pinilux offers an entirely Spartan photography experience. It‘s designed for those individuals who don‘t possess a television or computer, still use a 1999 Nokia phone and refuse to countenance email. It is definitely the ideal optic for all those Billy No Lenses out there.
The moral of this story? Even if you don’t have a lens on your camera, you can’t do any worse than this.
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Yes my first go at pinholio was with a lens cap device fitted to my M2… Mike did a little piece around my experiment a year or so back, results were not compelling either.
This year I acquired an Ondu 6 x 9 wooden pinhole camera from a man named Elvis, and I had some better results. Part of the trick with pinholio is using wide angles and getting in close. It was those 104 degree angles from the Ondu, which sent me scurrying off in the direction of the Hasselblad Superwide, which has a stunning 38mm (medium format equivalent to 21 degrees on 35mm) Zeiss Biogon lens with a 91 degree field of view.
I just don’t think that the distance between the pinhole and the film plane is conducive to achieving the signature pinhole look.
William mentioned his VPK in his comment that the image quality seems worse than what Mike has made with the M10 and the pinholio lens cap… In similar vein, I have just shot a few pictures with a Kodak 127 "Brownie" the second model, that I found in the local charity shop for £7. Some of the shots that I made with that are so vague that it is hard to know what is going on, and it would seem that this is wholly due to the feature "Daikon" lens. The price of the 127 film was high, so I followed some instructions from Lomo and ran some Poundshop Vista 35mm colour film through it.
As Mike says… All good fun.
Time was, approximately when I was eight and three quarters, when I would have been proud of these blurry shots had originated from my Box Brownie. I don‘t think, however, that I am a natural pinholer. I will take the device back to Ivor and call
It quits.
Stephen, I am a bit confused by your comment above. I was saying that my VPK could produce much better images than this pinhole device. Perhaps my comment was too cryptic. Mike has been brave in ‘having a go’ with the device, but I have seen other pinhole devices which can produce better photos. I also think that this device might work better with film. Mike should ask Ivor whether he has any tips for using the device.
William
You are right, but I can’t undo mistooks on this blog William… I noticed that I had misread that sentence, when Mike also pointed it out.
Apols.
Just had to check that it’s not April 1st !
No, deadly serious but William reckons my efforts are below par. He believes pinhole cameras are capable of better, sharper results. I suspect it’s all a matter of distance from the hole to the sensor or film. This pinhole cap could well perform better on film Cameras for which it was originally made. I suppose it’s all pretty academic since I shall not be keeping it.
I am afraid the results do not impress me so it is not going on my Christmas list. Fun? Yes and it’s not even April yet.
David
I am think they are impressively bad but, as you say, a bit of fun.
Why does that remind of the one HCB in his POW camp that they made?
Perhaps this out-crêping pancake out-grounds all other reasons for out-budgeting for an SL?!
I enjoyed the fun and am glad it led to some further outsourcing of outformation from William F.
Makes my VPK look like a Summilux, I’m afraid. There is something wrong with this one. I have seen other pinhole devices give much better results. Years ago, Boys Own Paper and other publications for young people used to publish designs for making pinhole cameras out of shoe boxes and the like. Here is a modern article on the subject https://www.35mmc.com/10/09/2017/35mm-pinhole-photography/ .There are also some other products that seem to have been made for Leicas http://www.leicagoodies.com/spins.html
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Skink-Pinhole-Pancake-Pro-Kit-swap-zone-plate-zone-sieve-lens-Leica-M-240-M9-M8-/300611752429.
I am going to engage in further adventures in using ancient cameras when I return from attending the LHSA AGM in the US. The biggest difficulty in actually holding a 100 + year old camera steady is that ancient shutter buttons and levers can be very stiff easily causing ‘shutter shake’ if no tripod is used. This does not apply to modern cameras, of course, but for pinhole work I would suggest using ISO 400 at most and a tripod. I would also suggest using film which will provide a wider depth of image than digital.
My few cents, as the Yanks might say.
William
You are probably right, William. I’m the first to admit I know nothing about this subject and the article was just a bit of fun. Certainly not to be taken seriously…..
All good fun, of course, but very educational too. Readers might like to research the ‘camera obscura’ and the ‘camera lucida’ where all of this began. The former was known in many parts in ancient times, including China, Greece and the Arab world. Here is a somewhat humorous history:
http://neolucida.com/history/obscura-and-lucida/
The interesting things out of all of this are that some of the ‘Old Masters’ were not as good at drawing as we thought and also that some of them used cameras. There are still people out there who insist that photography is not an art.
William