Last Saturday at a wedding I was able to use the much praised Lumix LX3 with its 24-60mm Leica lens.

Lumix LX3 camera

Amongst its multitude of controls is the Scene Mode which offers no fewer than 24 options where “the camera sets the optimal exposure and hue to obtain the desired picture.”   One of these options is “Pin Hole” where the “picture is taken darker and with soft focus around the subjects”, and where the “quality is automatically fixed” to the lowest setting.  (Quotations from the 150 page manual.)

I’m all for popularising pinhole photography but PLEASE NOT LIKE THIS.  

Here’s  a shot taken on the Pin Hole setting :

Using the "pinhole" setting on the Lumix LX3

Now if you want a setting that puts a vignette in an image, then go ahead.  Personally I would do it post production in image editing software and it would take 15 seconds.  But this has got very little to do with pinhole photography which involves taking control of your picture-taking and not blindly submitting to some pre-ordained and erroneous perception of what photography is.  Pinhole photography should be the antithesis of so much of contemporary photography which is homogenised, obsessed with pixel-counting automation and which blindly pursues technique ahead of content.

So, take control; make your own camera; make your own images.

That was a reasonable rant, I think !

Oh, yes, by the way, the Lumix is an impressive digital point and shoot.

This is a shot of my homemade 6×7 pinhole camera.  With a recycled Mamiya RB67 back, it takes 120 film.  It has a precision micro-drilled pinhole.  The rest is cardboard and gaffer tape.  Although I do have 35mm pinhole cameras I prefer to use those that take 120, 5×4 or 10×8 film as they make much better contact prints or scans.  I use precision drilled pinholes because once you know the diameter of the pinhole, you can work out the optimum focal length of your camera, and from that the f-number.  Thus accurate exposures can be calculated.  This is the camera I used to take the images of the viaduct and railway bridge – see Image Gallery.

Thought I’d start with the image I submitted to this year’s  World Pinhole Day.  It was shot just outside Monmouth, on the banks of the river Wye.  I used a homemade 6×7 camera and Fuji Velvia.