Hands-On With the Pinwide Wideangle Pinhole for Micro Four Thirds

Back in April, I wrote about the Pinwide wide-angle pinhole lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras. I liked it so much I ordered one, and I promised to let you know how it worked out. The short answer? Pretty good, for a pinhole. The long answer? Read on.

The Pinwide is a plastic disk that clicks onto the lens mount of my Panasonic GF1 like any other lens. It has a slightly dished conical shape which puts the pinhole back inside the body. This is what makes it wide-angle, and it's something not possible on an SLR because of the mirror that slaps around inside the body. The pinhole itself is laser-cut into a tiny disk of metal at the center.

In use, you get to adjust the camera's ISO and shutter speed, and that's it. The aperture is fixed at around ƒ96-ƒ128, so even in bright sunlight you'll need to crank your ISO to a minimum of ISO 800. And with such a tiny aperture, everything in the frame, near or far, is in focus.

It's surprisingly fun to use. Set the camera to aperture priority, crank up the ISO and all you have left to do is point and shoot. The 22mm focal length (35mm equivalent) means you can stand a couple of feet from a person and capture them from top to toe. It also means dreamy, super-wide landscape and cityscape shots.

The resulting pictures are grainy (noisy), blurry and have some distinctly weird color shifts. In short, just the kind of thing you spend long minutes achieving in grunge-ifying apps like Instagram.

If you're looking for high-fidelity shots, you won't find them here. If you're looking for $40 worth of fun, along with some truly unusual-looking shots, then the Pinwide is just the thing. Recommended.

Pinwide product page [Wanderlust]
source: Gadget Lab

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