Poplar farm along I-84 in Oregon, 30 seconds

Those of you who know me, know that I enjoy my pinhole camera.  I rarely go out on any photographic excursion without it in fact.  So, I figured I would spend a few minutes tonight introducing it to those of you who are not familiar with it.

The camera I use is made by in Hong Kong.  They make beautiful, wooden cameras that operate as wonderfully as they are beautiful.  My specific camera is the Zero 6×9 multi-format, though I only ever shoot it in 6×9.

There are three main reasons I enjoy my pinhole so much: it is slow, it is simple and it is durable.  I am often amused at the irony that my love of nature and my love of photography have combined to get me out to more places than I would have otherwise, but that pressing desire to photograph those places sometimes causes me to rush and scramble so much for the next shot as to actually distract me from enjoying the scenery right in front of me.  The aperture on my pinhole is a “blazing” f250.  That means even on fairly bright days I am going to have exposures ranging from 15 to 60 seconds in length.  It is not uncommon for me to expect to wait out a five or eight minute exposure either.  What I have found this does is that it slows me down.  I tend to find myself relaxing a bit more, looking around, studying and planning, but also just simply enjoying.  The required wait on the camera pays off in a more relaxed approach to the landscape around me.

Salmon Street Springs, 8 seconds

Finally, I can rarely have a discussion about pinhole without mentioning how durable this camera is.  My camera has been dropped into the ocean…twice.  It fell off my tripod and got swept over the Eagle Falls at Lake Tahoe.  It jumped off my lap and out of a parked car in NW Portland once, shattering itself on the sidewalk.  It was probably tired of being dropped in the ocean.  But for all those adventures, it still works.  The images it makes look as good as the day I bought it.  The second time it fell in the ocean, it took about three minutes for me to find it in the surf.  When I did, it was buried under wet sand, with only the leg of my tripod to indicate where it was.  I opened the camera, dumped out the salt water and sand, then ran it under the faucet in a nearby restroom to rinse it out.  I dried it with paper towels and had it reloaded within 15 minutes.  I cannot say this would have been possible with any of my other cameras.  As long as I can keep the box light tight, and as long as I do not damage the pinhole itself, this camera will last a lifetime or more.

Of course, it does not look nowhere near as nice as it used to.  But it has plenty of character, and stories.