Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/04/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I missed the start of the thread on pinholes but L. P. Clerc's books on "Photography: Theory and Practice" go into great details about the characteristics of the ideal pinhole. Even lens designers Abney and Dallmeyer calculated pinholes along with their more solid glass optics. The general consensus is that an f 300 pinhole works best. For a 30 mm pinhole to film distance this is a tiny .1 mm pinhole. This is a pretty small hole to punch in tinfoil and Clerc suggests that a pinhole .3 mm in diameter won't degrade the image quality too much. I recall that Kodak used to distribute cardboard pinhole camera kits to the Boy Scouts to help Scouts complete their Photography merit badges and incidentally get them hooked on photography. I wonder how many Leica users got their addiction from their pinhole kit. Larry Zeitlin