Pink Flamingos

Post-Script: My visit to the Rio Grande Zoo was on the last Sunday in April, when Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is observed. I brought with me, besides the 4x5 box camera and paper negatives, a Holga 120 pinhole camera with Kodak Ektar 100 color film. I also had a good time meeting and photographing with artist Becky Ramotowski and her husband Shane.

I do have mixed feelings about shooting color medium format film in pinhole cameras. While the results from a quality glass-lens camera with medium format can be spectacular, these images from the Holga 120 pinhole lack any additional sense of quality over what one might expect with 35mm film in a pinhole camera, where the sense of granularity in the emulsion sometimes works well with the softness of the image. Here, using the larger 120 format film, there's just softness absent any crunch of grain. The additional cost of processing and printing, for only twelve images, makes the process seem excessively expensive. I'm going to have to consider making, converting or buying a 35mm format pinhole camera, just to experiment with further.

Photo via Holga 120 pinhole camera and Kodak Ektar 100 film, typecast via Royal Futura 800.