Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Pinhole Photography
Larry Fratkin's Online Pinhole Calculators
David Balihar's PinholeDesigner
The Pinhole FAQ (English)
FAQ du sténopé (French)
Lochcamera FAQ (German)
Postscript
Photographers photograph in varying degree for (a) the experience or for (b) the
images. When you photograph for the experience, the emphasis is on the process
itself – the pleasure of the making a pinhole camera, the pleasure of planning
pictures, and the pleasure of making pictures with a simple device. When you
photograph for the images, the emphasis is mainly on the result. The pinhole
camera is basically an imaging device with potentials which other cameras or
techniques do not possess, e.g. softness of definition, infinite depth of field,
rectilinearity.
In photography certain subjects may be better suited for a particular technique than
others. Photojournalists, for example, normally use 35 mm SLRs in their work.
Portrait photographers often use medium format cameras. Architecture is best
rendered by large format cameras. Also in pinhole photography some subjects are
better suited than others. Long exposures exclude certain subjects, softness of
definition exclude others. Infinite depth of field and rectilinear ultra wide-angle
images represent a special potential.
Beginners should start with subjects with clear graphic shapes or bright colors in
sunlight. Cityscapes tend to make better pictures than rural landscapes with their
soft lines and softer shades of color or grey tones – at least for the beginning
pinhole photographer. Portraits may prove slightly more difficult than still lifes,
objects, structures, buildings and cityscapes.
Note:
[1] English translation: "If the facade of a building, or a place, or a landscape is
illuminated by the sun and a small hole is drilled in the wall of a room in a building
facing this, which is not directly lighted by the sun, then all objects illuminated by
the sun will send their images through this aperture and will appear, upside down,
on the wall facing the hole". (Eder, 1945:39).
Literature
1 History
Aristotle. Problems. I. Books I-XXI. With an English translation by W. S. Hett, M.
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