ONDU Pinhole Camera
ONDU Multiformat 6 x 12
Everything old is great fun again!
Shoots medium format film complete with red light leaks, almost sharp, strongly vignetted, ultra wide 6 x 12 format and I just feel a little bit weird but in a good way. To be fair I think the light leak happened outside the camera. It appeared to me that the roll of film was kind of lumpy looking and not wound tightly enough when I opened the back of the camera. Since it was my first roll of film in the ONDU I have noted this as an “opportunity for improvement” in my next adventure. Pinhole is one of those things that you will either love or just won’t get it. It’s a bit like playing vinyl records versus digital audio streaming. If technical perfection is a key requirement from your camera gear then take a look at the Hasselblad H3D sections in this website. If like me, you are intrigued by the unique image quality and want to put some effort into creating a sense of intrigue and strangeness into your images then this is worth a try!
Pinhole! Are you crazy?
I had been looking for trends and inspiration in my social media feeds, mainly Facebook group postings and following people into Instagram or checking out their websites. Anyway a number of pinhole posts started to pop up and eventually a couple of really nice, sharper images appeared and I started to get interested. This led me to ONDU as a fairly recent entrant into the manufacturing area for pinhole cameras. They were well priced and the reviews were good. A number of regular shooters were contributing on social media so I could see that they were consistently getting good results with these interesting little wooden boxes and so I took a closer look and ultimately decided to buy the multi-format 6x12 version.
Multiformat 6 x 6, 6 x 9, 6 x 12
The ONDU takes medium format 120 roll film. Internally it can be configured to change the film format using wooden inserts that slide in to produce 6 x 6, 6 x 9 or 6 x 12 cm negatives or slides if you’re shooting transparency. The shutter control is a sliding panel and the pinhole has a fixed aperture of f160. The camera body is hand made from wood and is a work of art by itself! The back and film winding knobs are held in place by strong magnets which do the job well and feel solid. The shutter slide moves smoothly and easily so short exposures at around 1 sec are easy enough without worrying about camera movement on the tripod.
Shooting with a pinhole
My ONDU sat on the shelf for about 3 months before I found enough time to load it up with film and get out for some shots. That’s when I didn’t stop to think and loaded up some Fujicolor Pro 400H colour negative film. With only bright daylight subjects to shoot I realised very quickly that this was not the best choice, especially since I didn’t have a suitable ND filter to get a long enough exposure time to be practical. To get around this I had to wait for late afternoon and decided to pick some areas in our yard once it was not quite as bright and managed exposures from 10 secs to 3 minutes. I metered using my incident meter and a couple of spot readings for good measure to check. The ONDU conversion guide was used without any other calculations and it proved to be quite accurate. My conclusion was that I would shoot mostly Ilford FP4 plus B&W in the future but the colour images have such a “different” personality about them that I will no doubt shoot some more in the future. I have also acquired a variable ND filter and just need an adapter for it to fit on the ONDU so ISO 400 film will be practical in the future.
“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”
– Aaron Siskind