Sunday, February 04, 2007

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

River Thames (C) 2000, Peter Marshall. Used with permission.Source: About.com
There is nothing particularly special about this photograph of the water board intake on the River Thames, except that it was made without a lens. Taken on 35mm film, it makes a decent although slightly soft 6"x4" print. Photographers viewing this might comment on the fact that the painted iron work just inches from the camera and the distant houses are almost equally sharp.
Pinhole cameras were known long before photography, and still have a certain interest, not least because of the sharpness in depth they provide. A pinhole doesn't focus an image, so objects at different distances are more or less equally sharp.
April 29, 2007 is this years Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, so you have plenty of time to prepare for it. It's a simple event to take part in - all you need to do is to register on the site, take a photograph on that day and upload it to the web site. You can see the pictures taken in previous years from 2001-2006 in the gallery on the site. Why not put one of yours there this year?
If you have a camera - film or digital - which takes interchangeable lenses, taking pinhole images could not be more simple. The feature Simple Pinhole tells you all you need to know to take pinhole pictures with any interchangeable lens camera. If you don't have a suitable camera, it is easy to make your own, and you find links to helpful sites in the Pinhole Photography section.