A little bit of digital pinhole with the Thingyfy Pinhole Pro S, 01 May 2023

A little bit of digital pinhole with the Thingyfy Pinhole Pro S, 01 May 2023

It was World Pinhole Day last weekend but I realised far too late to take part. I had one idea, though, to take a body cap for my micro four thirds Olympus Pen E-PL1 mirrorless camera and fix a Really So Subtle pinhole that I have knocking around. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the body cap, no matter how hard I tried. So I turned to Plan B, which was to find something online. That too was a bust, body caps at both of the online stores I normally use were either not available or out of stock. 

Then on one site I discovered by accident the Thingyfy Pinhole Pro S, an 11mm focal length pinhole lens with a 120° wide-angle field of view and an engineered fixed 0.14mm aperture. Even better it was on offer for 30€, less than half the regular price of 70€. Naturally I took the plunge and ordered it, though it was not delivered until after Pinhole Day.

It's a lovely piece of engineering and fits smoothly onto the body of the E-PL1 compared to my other lenses—though bearing in mind that the other lenses are the plastic Lomography Experimental Lens Kit this wasn't really a comparison. 

Pinhole exposure calculations with a digital camera are simplicity itself. Just dial in the correct shutter speed depending on how the image looks on the LCD display and you're good to go. It's cheating compared to 'real' pinhole photography, but for a bit of pinhole fun it's ideal. 

But what about the results? In the sales bumpf the Thingyfy Pinhole Pro S is described as providing 'nearly infinite depth of field along with a dreamy image quality'. By dreamy in this case they mean 'soft', as the images were certainly quite fuzzy. There was also a very heavy vignette, more so than many low budget medium format cameras like the Holga.

I did wonder whether the poor quality images were a result using an older 12MP Olympus Pen from 2010, or whether it was because of the camera's broken image stabilization. But other users have reported similar finding from different cameras so it's more likely that it's a feature of the Thingyfy. 

The colours were vivid, admittedly, and the lens was certainly fun to use. But the Thingyfy is not an accessory to use if you are looking for better quality pinhole images. Personally, I am going to take it out again, and I'll be looking to improve the image quality in the future. 

#Pinhole, #Photography, #PinholeCamera, #PinholePhoto, #Digital, #Thingyfy, #Lensless, #LongExposure, #PinholeDay, #Experimental,