Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Although most of the earliest cameras didn’t have glass lenses. They relied solely on pinholes (that provided a point source of light) for a focused image to be captured on film. The results were beautifully eerie and vintage and looked like Instagram filters WAY before Instagram was even a word.
Contemporary cameras use state-of-the-art lenses, mirrors, mounts, AF/MF techniques to deliver amazing images, but those images are too life-like. There’s always a charm to vintage filters, with the way their colors are de-saturated/different, with the vignette around the borders. Rather than relying on software, the Pinhole Pro lens allows you to harness the vintage style of photography using your go-to camera. Available in a series of mounts that allow it to fit onto most popular camera brands, the Pinhole Pro employs a series of pinholes of varying apertures that can be adjusted, not just to achieve different styles of photography, but to also intimately understand the intertwined relationship between light and photography.
The Pinhole Pro comes with a completely machined metal construction. The absence of a glass lens makes it more resilient and impervious to damages like scratches, smudges, etc. What’s the most interesting is that the Pinhole Pro features a variable aperture, with pinhole sizes going all the way from 0.1mm to 0.8mm in diameter. The pinhole diameter is adjustable by the dial around the lens, allowing you to play with multiple pinhole diameters, allowing for real-time experimentation and manipulation, a feature that doesn’t exist in any model so far. Smaller pinholes provide crisp details but require a lot of light, while larger pinholes are great for shooting vintage, Hitchcock-esque videos!
What’s more, is that the Thingyfy Pinhole Pro brings professional vintage-style photography at a reasonable price. Rather than shelling out more than $1000 for a pinhole lens, the Pinhole Pro comes with the same precision, but at a fraction of the price. Based on tour camera make, you can get yourself a Pinhole Pro custom made for your camera’s mount. Thingyfy currently works with Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony A, Sony E, Fuji X, Micro 4/3 (MFT) and Pentax K style mounts. Early buyers can even get their name laser-engraved on the lens! Definitely worth a ‘shot’ I say!
Designer: Chenchen
Nikon D750 + Pinhole Pro (by Searing)
Nikon D800 + Pinhole Pro (by kkcat)
Short experimental film shot entirely with the Thingyfy Pinhole Pro on a Nikon D750.
