Nikon and Canon DSLRs grab their own pinhole lens covers
By Darren Murph 
posted July 3rd 2010 6:12AM
posted July 3rd 2010 6:12AM
Oh sure, you've got options when it comes to getting a pinhole lens onto your DSLR, but we're guessing none are as simplistic and compact as this. Hangul's cover is barely bigger than the one Nikon and Canon ships, yet it provides that glorious soft blur pinhole action just as effectively as a dedicated lens. Details are fairly scant on these bad boys, but we are told that they're selling in Japan for ¥4,400 ($50) apiece. Check out a shot of what exactly one can do for you just after the break. 
50$ for a pinhole? WFT!
@mex
Do you mean WTF?
@mex
Surely the point of a pinhole camera is the enjoyment you get out of making one, then seeing the results of your effort?
@mex
Is the pinhole suppose to take an excellent dslr and reduce it's output to one that a disposable camera can best? That sample shot is not impressive. Maybe I'm missing something.
@Roger Moore: then try to make such a photo using the usual process: dslr + raw + photoshop.
From all pinhole camera photos I have seen, actually the most interesting are the people shots. Pinhole manages to make a cold day smooth and soothing... The effect is hard to reproduce otherwise.
@Roger Moore Search for pinhole photographs elsewhere. It looks like the "hole" in the pinhole they used for the sample shot is too large-- ideally, a pinhole lets in only a very small amount of light from each direction (this is the reason ray-traced scenes are so sharp and never have blurring).
@tallfella I think this he means: What, Fuck That!
@WilliamNighthawk D: Edit Button
@WilliamNighthawk
NICE!
@mex
What a bargain :D
@WilliamNighthawk: Nice "Galaxy Quest" reference...
@WilliamNighthawk No. WFT = Well, Fancy That. We use it all the time on a British BBS I frequent. Toodle-oo!
Cough on your lens to get the same effect
useless ..
Some card board will do the trick for free. Let's face it, pinhole photo's ain't that interesting.
Pinhead?
So you buy a 1000$ DSLR, and convert it into something a 6 year old with a tissue box could've made? great....
Feel free to disagree with me. But, I just don't see the appeal of spending so much money on a DSLR just to buy a $50 lens to produce crappy, blurry images. You have the equipment to produce amazing images, and then you ruin it just for some 'novelty', where you cant even see the subject because it's blurry as hell. It's like if we took 'The Six Million Dollar Man' and instead of doing it correctly, and making him bionic; we just gave him wooden "pirate-legs" for the novelty of the situation.
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth
Good News! - You don't have to use this with every shot and it's just another example of the versatility of dslrs!
@irfan
I know that; but it just seems useless to pay $50 for a lens which is intended to create a sharp image, yet fails at it's purpose. Which is the exact reason as to why I award it this:
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DAMN MY KEYBOARD TOMFOOLERY!
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth
Pinhole lenses are not intended to produce sharp results, nor are they practical for everyday shooting. They're fun toys that you can take images with that look unique by virtue of how different they are from ordinary lenses. If you're able to spend several hundred or potentially thousands of dollars on a high end DSLR, I don't see any reason why it's unfeasable to spend $50 to convert it into something interesting for lomographic purposes.
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth Maybe you should re-consider that job working for Lensbaby.
I demand FourThirds version!
Pin hole cameras are more fun for moving subjects anyway, but if it can make the sky over the Chuo line look blue like in that photo, it must be magical.
I think I take photos like this already
Why are they blurry? On film, pinholes give sharp focus and a huge DOF. I guess it could be the distance of the lens-cap from the sensor plane, but maybe diffraction too...It seems to defeat the whole purpose of shooting pinhole shots.
@Living Brain Donor
No, pinhole photographs exhibit immense DoF but are just as blurry whether they are shot on film or on a digital sensor. We may remember film pinhole photos to be sharper for two reasons. 1) we tend to look at fairly small prints from film, not blown up to 100% magnification on a computer screen (as we tend to do with digital). 2) The blur radius is constant, given a specific size of pinhole. If you then increase the size of the imaging area (e.g., a larger piece of film), then relatively speaking, details will appear to be sharper. A pinhole 0.25mm across on 8"x10" sheet film will appear much sharper than the same 0.25mm pinhole projected onto a 35mm piece of film. The difference is even greater if you use a camera with a cropped sensor that is smaller than 36mm x 24mm.
Looks great!.........NOT
I just drilled a 0.5mm hole in a camera cover, works like a charm. I just go to my local camera store (Jessops in the UK) and have a look in the box full of odd bits like lens covers, filters, cleaning cloths etc, and there are usually lots of camera covers for different cameras. Total cost, 20p for the cover, at most.
What's with this new fangled pinhole garbage
Step 1: Take a body cap for your camera
Step 2: Make a tiny hole in the middle of the cap
Ta-dah! You've saved some money.
@Terjay I'm lost one... *sob*
Why would I pay to take blurry images with my DSLR?
I always thought that the goal was to get sharper images rather than blurry images. Spending $50 bucks for this is NUTZ. If you really wanted blurry images you could put vasoline on the lens for free!
I always thought that the goal was to get sharper images rather than blurry images. Spending $50 bucks for this is NUTZ. If you really wanted blurry images you could put vasoline on the lens for free!
Ha ha, I was like, wow, look at how much more saturated the colors are in that pinhole photo...
Then I remembered that I'd set my monitor to wide gamut and that it had nothing to do with the pinhole lol....
I like the results that you get, but I think it'd be cooler if either there was a way to adjust the size of the pinhole or if you got a couple different hole sizes in a set.
$50 isn't actually that bad.
To get a good pinhole, you need to take a piece of metal and drill the hole through that and then sand off the burrs that form on the side you didn't bore through. Plastic isn't a great material because as you sand, you'll deform your lens. Precision-drilled holes through metal aren't inexpensive, and mounting them in a body cap at a 90˚ to the sensor securely AND attaching a good-quality UV filter will run you close to $50. I know my pinhole project is going to cost me around $35, toss in a bit of markup, some nicer materials, and presto: $50 in a world where most lenses start with a few extra zeros on that number.
What I don't see here is a filter or other cover over the pinhole. Unprotected, wind and other air motion will cause your camera to form a low-pressure area inside it, drawing bits of dust inside, which cause specks to appear on your sensor. You _need_ to cover a pinhole lens or be prepared to clean your sensor all the time.
I bought a 10D back in 2004 - my first DSLR.
The very first day I owned it, I drilled a small hole in the body cap to see if I could turn it into a digital pinhole camera. And surprise...it worked!
$50 for this? Holy hell, that's got to be the dumbest thing I've read this year.
I am 100% sure they've been selling one of these at my local camera store for $14 for a long time.
I like doing pinhole photography from time to time. It's got an interesting look, it's entertainingly anachronistic, and there's no reason it means you can't do other kinds of photography with your fancy camera.
Or you could get the Loreo Lens-in-a-Cap, which is $19 (including shipping) and does 5 different apertures including pinhole.
http://www.loreo.com/pages/products/loreo_lenscap.html