Pinhole Photography

I fancied a try at pinhole photography, so the easiest way for me was a Holga pinhole lens on a digital camera (Pentax K-01).
My problem is, I'm that used to assessing images based on sharpness, I can't evaluate if these pinhole images are any good. Any help would be appreciated.

I think they're about par for the course.
I played with a home made pinhole lens on an ESII with Kodachrome slide film back in 1977 to see what would happen. This is what I achieved.




and with a normal lens (long forgotten which one):

I can't comment eon the quality of the pinhole photos as I have no experience of them "BUT" they can't be that good as I can't see the "WORM"
Actually I wouldn't mind having a go at that myself so good for you for trying it.
CHEERS Vic.

Pentax Q System 07 Body Mount lens

There's some monkey business going on with that one John !

Thanks John K for the comparison. I think I may try something with a bit more landscape content for my next effort.

Vic, the worm comes out on a hill down by the Wear at Fatfield. This one is too far for him to slither!!!

That Q 07 lens seems to be something of a halfway house JR. Have you used it for any landscape work, or is it not suitable?

The Q 07 lens would make very blurred landscapes as it only focuses up to about 6 feet. It's interesting to experiment with.

Pinhole images are always somewhat soft. The issue is less significant as you go to larger film formats. Your results are about typical for APSC.
Their big advantage is the near infinite DOF, so fopr best effect you need to make use of that & have part of the view very much closer to the camera

John that's not a pinhole lens at all. It's a single element fixed aperture lens. 11.5mm F/9.

A pinhole has NO lens, and will typically be F/128 and can be significantly smaller
IIRC optimum aperture depends on wavelength & the distance from the sensor & changing the distance from the hole to the sensor adjusts the angle of view produced, but doen't affect focus. Very different charcteristics.

True Mike, but something approaching the same concept in many ways, which is why I mentioned it.

Just for the record, Barrie's images were APSC (from a K-01) ; mine was on 'full frame' (36x24) 35mm transparency film. The definition on both seems to be much the same. As John's Q image was through a lens (albeit a very basic one) rather than a pinhole one would expect it to appear somewhat sharper providing it is in the focus range as John pointed out. There is no focussing required with an actual pinhole lens, but moving it it nearer or further away from the film/sensor plane changes it's field of view (or in other words, its focal length.)

There's not much difference in size between the two, despite all the fuss made about full frame. The apparent definition does improve as you go to 5x4, 10x8 etc. Pinhole film cameras with the long exposure times are ideal DIY projects where a true large format camera can be put together for next to nothing.

I really like them. That's the whole point: soft, blurry, dream-like images with lots of atmosphere. I'd be happy with them.

Watched a presentation of pinhole photography by Steve Gosling. Some enjoyable images and I almost bought a pinhole kit to try out. IIRC the hole of the camera he was using was something in the range of f/137

I'm not sure you need to buy any kit. I didn't. A short extension tube with some silver foil over the end with a small pin hole in it and voila.

There's a similar example How To on WikiHow here using an old lens cap.