A few days ago I made a pinhole body cap for my canon AE-1. I made the pinhole as small as I could, it ended up .0065 +/- .0005" f/270. Would using one of the formulas to determine the optimal size work better for such a small focal length? Or does that only apply to longer focal lengths. Larry's site gives .011" as the optimal size. That would be better for handheld exposure and looking through the veiwfinder but I want the sharpest image possible since it's such a small negative.
After looking through the viewfinder for a few seconds, it's pretty easy to see the image. I have a rubber eye-cup that really helps block out excess light. For my first roll I used delta 3200. Using the sunny 16 rule, I figured out exposure to be about 1/15 sec. I have since made a dial calculator, and it says it would be between 1/11 and 1/8 sec. Looking at the negatives, they could have used the extra stop. Flare didn't seem too bad through the viewfinder, but it is awful on the negatives. I don't know what the vertical line is on some of the frames (17,18,28,29) Maybe some of you can provide an answer to that. I walked to the post office and took the camera with me. Just took pictures of whatever. I even shot some cars moving at 45mph!!! All exposures except for the first few were hand held. I bracketed a bit, and the exposures range from 1/4 to 1/30. They are actually sharper than what the contact sheet looks like... my scanner isn't very good. here's a scan of the contact sheet: low res 64kb http://holgamods.blinkk.net/images/ph35cs-lowres.jpg high(er) res 192kb http://holgamods.blinkk.net/images/ph35cs-hires.jpg John
