Pinhole mythology

I was looking today at the site of the exclusive U.S. distributor for

Holga cameras, <a

href="http://www.freestylephoto.biz/cam_world.php">Freestyle

Photographic Supplies</a>, and came across this statement: "<i>Learn

the secrets of how the first photographers shot with

pinhole...</i>".<br>     I've seen that idea in quite a

few places, and it is nonsense. The first photographers <i>all</i>

put lenses on their cameras for the very good reason that the first

photo-sensitive media were so weakly responsive to light that they

simply could not record an image without the light gathering power of

lenses. Luckily for them, the essentials of lens design for

projecting images onto a flat plane had already been worked out and

put into use by the 16th Century designers of <i>camera obscura</i>

for artists' use. <br>     To be sure, there were some

early experimenters with pinhole photography, but they were few and

far between. There was also some early commercial production of

simple pinhole cameras, probably due to the cost of early conventional

photographic equipment. All of that, with a few exceptions like the

Kodak cardboard kit, pretty much died out by the beginning of the 20th

Century. The use of the pinhole in photography really didn't start to

take off until the 1960's when it began to be promoted by

counter-culture publications like <u>The Whole Earth Catalog</u> which

re-awoke the idea that people could lead a more self-sufficient life

than had been imagined for some time. That trend was also accompanied

by the development of photo-sensitive films and papers which made

pinhole photography a practical reality. An article with a good

over-view of real pinhole camera history is Jon Grepstad's <a

href="http://home.online.no/~gjon/pinhole.htm"><b>Pinhole Photography

History, Images, Cameras, Formulas</b></a> (1996).

Perhaps the issue is in their sentence structure; in other words, not how photographer's first images were made with a pinhole but rather how the first pinhole was shot by a photographer. Just a thought.

Yes, the quote does have a kind of cryptic quality. Doesn't work for me as either bad grammar or bad history. As I said, I've seen the claim often elsewhere that the pinhole played a role in the early 19th Century development of photography; I think it is basically one of those seemingly logical ideas that just don't pan out when one actually examines the facts. I was reminded of all this recently when I picked up a copy from a Hastings' bargain table of Beaumont Newhall's <u>The History of Photography</u>. I think it was originally published in 1939; it's a great read, very thorough and places the subject well in its context of history. It is amazing what good photography was done by even some of the earliest pioneers in the discipline. Of course, the pinhole did play a role, but it goes back to classic times and far pre-dates the development of media that could actually fix an image on a surface for later viewing.

"Pinhole photography became popular in the 1890s. Commercial pinhole cameras were sold in Europe, the United States and in Japan."<p>

 

Just borrowing a quote from Grepstad's article - this pretty much qualifies the impression I had of the pinhole in history, as being associated with the late Victorian period. If this association is a common one, it could be that the 'myth' is partly due to people not knowing the true history of photography itself.

My '90-'91 McKeown's has 3 or 4 listings for commercially produced pinhole cameras. The oldest is a ca. 1900 quarter-plate camera with 6 pinholes that made 6 simultaneous exposures. That was the popular tintype design for the era, so I presume that the objective was portraits, but it must have been something of an ordeal to get your picture taken that way. It is interesting that multiple simultaneous exposure cameras have come into vogue again.

Commercial pinhole camera makers tend to favor designs that look like Victorian furniture. Whether the designs have any historic legitimacy is probably secondary to soaking the buyer to the greatest possible degree for an instrument that has little functional advantage over something made of cardboard and duct tape.

LOL. That's certainly true !

I think they confuse the history of the camera obscura (where it WAS used with a pinhole, or at least the principal was known, prior to use of the lens) with the history of the camera.

 

"Commercial pinhole camera makers tend to favor designs that look like Victorian furniture." I think this is for more practical reasons- easier to produce small quantities in wood than in plastic.

<< probably secondary to soaking the buyer to the greatest possible degree for an instrument that has little functional advantage over something made of cardboard and duct tape. >>

 

Maybe I'm missing the point of pinhole photography but being able to take 12 shots on 120 and never needing a changing bag or worrying about slack in the spool is just, well, nice. I consider the quality of the camera essential for me because I have enough to worry about with just composition!