The Plastic Lens ~ Words

Well, the day after WPPD (worldwide pinhole photography day) Randy Smith’s original Pinholga camera prototype arrived in the post, and a nice piece of Holga modification it is too! Having the pinhole plate secured by a screw in filter holder (Kodak Series V type known to Diana users who like to use filters on their plastic lenses) got me thinking I might be able to use this camera for more than just pinhole shots. The great thing about the new Diana + series of cameras is that the front element of their plastic lens (the actusl lens/aperture part) is removable to allow you to use different lenses (wide angle etc). With this in mind I removed the 75mm (standard Diana + lens) from my Diana + camera and checked it’s compatibility with the filter ring. It was a snug fit! Then I had to do was tape some small light leaks inside the camera that only became a problem when I took the pinhole plate out, but that left me with the fact I had no working aperture plate, so I then made a very makeshift aperture plate with part of an old polaroid pack-film casing and tin-snips and a drill (for the aperture) – it was not a pretty job, but would suffice to do some test Holga-Diana hybrid shots.
The included images in this post show some of the process of the hybridization – click on the thumbnails to bring them up and scroll through all of them.
I’ve shot one roll through the camera in pinhole mode (with rather disappointing results I’m afraid) and used two of the frames on the roll with the Diana + lens on and was very pleased with those results (shown here). There’s more vignetting than I’m used to, even with the Holga, but perhaps using a true square 16 shot mask would address that issue. As for the pinhole shots, I’m going to have to modify the camera some more as the images get masked/cropped quite a bit at the edges by the actual square aperture at the shutter when shooting pinhole. I need to move the pinhole much closer to the actual shutter mechanism aperture (see the Holga Diana Hybrid step #2 image), but I’ll do that at a later stage…