Week 24 Camera - Ondu MKII 6x6 PInhole Camera received as a reward for backing the Ondu MKII Pinhole Camera Kickstarter campaign. I love pinhole photography - the wide angles, the slightly distorted views, and the occasional sun flare. I truly admire the pinhole photographers that can achieve these otherworldly images. I can't decide if I like black and white pinhole photos with smooth tones or the sometimes wildly colorful sun aberrations achieved in color pinhole photos.

The Ondu MKII 6x6 Pinhole is a beautifully made wooden camera with a new design where magnets hold the camera back in place as well as the film advance knobs and film spool holders. Their Kickstarter campaign had a few setbacks causing a delay in shipping the rewards, but I must say the camera was well worth the wait. Everything was light tight and the first roll of film through the camera worked great.

I chose to load my Ondu MKII 6x6 with expired Kodak Portra 160NC and I went pinholing on my lunch break on a beautiful day last week. I walked to one of my usual places for lunch, the Mount Vernon area, with the Washington Monument and the Gothically styled architecture of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church. I prefer when the skies are partly sunny with puffy clouds, they look awesome in pinhole photos. It was very bright outside, without a cloud in the sky, but I did achieve aberrations in a couple of photos, not intentionally, but that was a bonus. I also shot a few photos in the backyard and of course, a front porch portrait of Brenda.

The film roll was developed with the Unicolor C41 kit from Film Photography Project and scanned on Epson V500 Photo flatbed scanner.

At this year's family Thanksgiving celebration, I received a camera gift from a relative that was quite a surprise. My sister-in-law gave me her uncle's camera that he used in World War II as a reporter, a 1938 Agfa Karat 35mm camera. The camera has an Oppar f4.5 lens with bellows and uses two rapid film cassettes that can shoot just 12 photos. It was stored in a leather 1943 Eastman Kodak camera case and appears to be in working order. The focusing ring seemed to be stuck, so I took out a few screws and and loosened it and put a drop or two of household oil in it and is seems to be turning a little better now. It only had one empty film cassette, so I found a second one on ebay along with a few expired 12 exposure rolls of film to give it a try. I will need to transfer the film to the empty cassette and load it into the camera to feed into the second cassette. Fortunately there's a video on how to load the camera on YouTube. My sister-in-law gifted me with the camera as she knew that I would truly appreciate and care for it and it would probably have wound up in the donation bin at the Salvation Army otherwise. I'm still waiting for the second film cassette, but I should be able to get out and shoot with it on my upcoming vacation. I have several cameras coming my way, hopefully in time for my Christmas vacation. I backed a Kickstarter for the new Ondu pinhole line of cameras, pre-ordered a Lomo'Instant Wide camera from Lomography and ordered a neon green Holga camera from B&H when I heard the Holga factory had shut down last week. And this week, a good friend gifted me with a stash of expired Kodak Portra 160NC from an old dark room, both 120 and 35.