The pinhole photography has always been fertile ground for the DIY given the apparent ease with which you can build a working camera and fully adapted to their tastes and needs; are not just lovers of self that have turned this hobby into a real business.
Stenopeika has become a brand that rightfully belongs to this genre thanks all’aprezzata range of handmade pinhole camera that has evolved over the years to include different film sizes and types of cameras, some other very simple even for discrete manufacturing complexity. Currently the range includes machines for pinhole size 135, 120 in all its forms, 4×5, 5×7, 8×10 and snapshots (for films peel-apart), plus two folding of exquisite workmanship in 8×10 format.
The camera here reviewed belongs to the first generation of Stenopeika (specifically, the model has serial number 026, then one of the first) and is a model that is still in production albeit with useful changes that occurred over time. It is a camera built entirely of wood, with no moving parts, around a calibrated pinhole of 0.20 mm made of metal foil. The manufacturing is classic, with compact parallelepiped body and with a few basic commands necessary for a true pinhole camera.
The hole of 0.2 mm and the focal length of 25mm allow you to have a decidedly wide viewing angle on the 6×6 frame and the small enough aperture to get long exposures but, without the risk of diffraction. The shutter is constituted by a simple sliding door that, in its rest position, covers the pinhole. A similar but smaller door is installed on the back of the car and covers the classic red window frame counter for monitoring the progress of the roll.
In the upper part of the camera are the only metal parts, namely the two pawls for the winding of the film (also inside there are two metal pins for roll locking) and the lid tightening screw; this top, in fact, must be removed for installing and removing film purposes, very intuitive: only take care to position the empty receiving spool in the left slot, in order to have the frame numbers in the correct position and not inverted as generally happens in medium format cameras.
In the lower part of the camera, which is fixed, we can see the clamping screws of the above mentioned pins and the standard tripod mounting, also made of metal and very useful having regard to the typical exposure duration; there are also four rubber feets that help stable positioning of the camera on any surface.
Overall, the Stenopeika 6×6 appears solidly built, leakage-proof, and it is really nice and intuitive in its use and is, of course, an almost final solution for the practitioner pinhole, thanks to the broad focal and the generous surface of the frame. I can not even mention the fact that it is a totally Made in Italy!
One of the few flaws worth mentioning, but that has been resolved in the subsequent evolution (and thus in the models currently on sale) is the loosening of the rolls inside the camera that may lead to a non-perfect flatness of the film: you can easily fix it by tensioning both knobs in the opposite direction to each other before shooting or entering into slots some foam to fill the empty space.
The main technical characteristics are as follows:
Model: Pinhole Camera
Format: 6×6 cm on 120 film.
hole size : 0.2 mm
Focal Length: 25 mm
Aperture: f/125
Size: Length 155 mm; height 110 mm; depth of 65 mm.
Weight: 450 g.
The camera, along with all the other models in the range is on sale online directly on shop Stenopeika .
Below there are some images taken with the Stenopeika 6×6 in previous editions of the Worldwide Pinhole Day:
