Last year I picked up a Wanderlust Cameras 11mm Pinwide Pinhole lens. Wanderlust no longer makes this “lens” so it’s a bit hard to find, but I managed to snag one on Ebay for a decent price. Unlike a homemade pinhole lens, which I’ve made and used in the past, the Pinwide is precision milled and 3D printed and creates a much cleaner and sharper image. It has a Micro Four Thirds mount, but I’ve mostly used it on my Sony A7S II with an adapter.
Because the pinhole lets in so little light, shooting video is only possible on a camera like my Sony A7S II, which can shoot video at extremely high ISOs with minimal grain. Here’s video I shot two months ago, on a particularly warm March day. As you can see, the lens isn’t really designed for a full frame sensor, and the pinhole’s image circle vignette is on full display, but I kind of like the effect. In future videos, I’ll probably shoot in APS-C crop mode to minimize the vignette.
And here’s another video I shot last summer, with my Sony in APS-C crop mode. Notice the reduced vignette.
The Pinwide is also a really fun and interesting lens to use in photography. Here are some of my favorite photos that I’ve captured with the Pinwide.
There’s a lot of creative potential in the Pinwide! Part of me feels like using a store-bought pinhole lens is cheating–pinhole is, by definition kind of DIY thing–but I sure don’t mind the cleaner, sharper image!