PinHole Photography Resource - PinHoleResource.com

Presently many artists are using Digital Pinhole Body Caps and Zone Plate Body Caps on their Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras.

The Zone Plate Caps we sell for Nikon, Canon EOS, Minolta, and Olympus will also image perfectly well on film based Nikon and Canon EOS cameras. Similarly, the "No Dust" Pinhole Body Caps we sell will also image perfectly well on film based Nikon, Canon EOS, Minolta, and Olympus.

A zone plate makes an entirely different kind of image from the look of a pinhole image. Using a zone plate there is a glow that occurs where there are contrast breaks — a light edge next to a dark edge. In the image below, there is a soft glow around the blimp.

©Eric Renner, Blimp, Quinhai Province, China, 2006, made with a zone plate cap on a Nikon D50.

It’s easy to turn a DSLR into a pinhole or zone plate camera! All Nikon models take the same Nikon cap and all of the Canon EOS models take the same EOS cap. If you have a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera, you should use a “No Dust” Pinhole Body Cap or Zone Plate body cap. These are available from Pinhole Resource.

“No Dust” means that the pinhole or zone plate has been made with a very opaque black area on film; the pinhole or zone plate area is clear on the film. Pinhole Resource zone plates consist of 9 opaque black rings made to extremely fine tolerances.

Pinhole Resource Zone Plate Cap on a Nikon D50

No dust should enter your digital camera — dust on the sensors can be a problem with digital photography. For complete information on this see our article Digital Pinhole/Zone Plate Body Caps.

Instructions for Use:

When changing lenses or changing to a pinhole cap or zone plate cap, you should always hold the camera lens opening area toward the ground, so dust doesn’t naturally fall into the camera. It’s very important to not change lenses in a windy or dusty area.

After putting the pinhole cap or zone plate cap on your digital camera, set your camera to Manual. In the menu, adjust for the lighting condition: tungsten, daylight, etc. Set the ISO at a low rating unless you want pixel artifacts in the final image. Try a pinhole image at about 1 second in bright sun. Try a zone plate image at about 1/20 of a second in bright sun. Zone plates are generally expose 7 times faster than pinhole. Zone plates work well too, even when imaging in lower unshadowed light, rather than always in bright sun. Due to veiling glare, some zone plate images will lack saturated color as compared to pinhole images. Saturation can be increased in Photoshop. Check the viewing screen on the back of the camera and either add or decrease the time. The beauty of digital is that you can see how the image looks and you can always delete. Trial and error is the only method and it’s the best. Unless you have some other specific reason, you should probably always shoot raw files. Note: If you are using a Minolta Maxxum DSLR with a zone plate cap, set your menu to star, go to custom, then set it to Shutter Lock Off.

The following Pinhole Resource Zone Plate Caps are available:

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