Skink Pinhole Pancake mounted to an Olympus EP1

Skink Pinhole Pancake

Skink Pinhole Pancake Mounted to a Nikon 

Skink Photo manufactures precision pinhole mounts for nearly any digital or film camera you can think of. There are specific mounts for at least all of the popular makes. You can even purchase DIY versions that can be used for large format 4×5 and larger.

The pinhole mounting system is called the Skink Pinhole Pancake.

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What makes the Skink Pinhole Pancake unique among pinholes?

To begin with, they are designed to produce the maximum image quality for a given format. Each mount is precision machined from high quality metals. The pinholes are laser punched to produce the most accurate apertures relative to the focal length required. The mounts are produced to fit the desired camera. The apertures are inset into the mount in order to minimize the distance to the film plane or sensor, which also results in a much wider viewing angle.

The Skink Pinhole Pancake feels like a high quality piece of camera gear. It feels that way because it is well designed in both form and function. Besides looking very professional mounted to the front of your camera, the Skink Pinhole Pancake mounts are ruggedly built, easy to use and a lot of fun to use.

Escalator – © John Neel

The thing I like best about pinhole is the soft image effects that are the signature of this medium. I love the variety of effects that can be accomplished. Pinhole to me is about capturing beautiful, soft, dreamy, and painterly effects.

One of the best things about the Skink Pinhole Pancake is its adaptability to other pinhole-related imaging plates. The Skink is available with exchangeable Pinhole, Zone Plate or Zone Sieve plates. Plates can be replaced by simply unscrewing the central plate mount and replacing the plate with another disk.

A Zone Plate is actually a tiny aperture produced from concentric circles resembling a target. A portion of the light bends inward as it passes over the inside edges of each ring. As a result, that portion of the light is focused in a similar manner as with a lens. The result is an image that is soft and glowing but with certain details rendered in relative sharpness.

Zone Sieve

A Zone Sieve (shown) is similar to a Zone Plate in that it also has rings. However, each ring is made up of a series of tiny pinholes rather than the continuous rings of the Zone Plate. The results produced are similar to, but actually very different to what is produced by other plates. The effects are also very dreamlike but again with some degree of sharpened edges.

Note: Unlike the Pinhole, both Zone Sieves and Zone Plates achieve a range of focus as a result of there rings and multiple pinhole apertures. The light that spills over the inside edges is focused to a a point along the lens axis while the rest of the light scatters or is captured in straight lines as with a pinhole. The resulting images are both soft and glowing with sharpened details.

Big Tree – © John Neel

The Skink designs are available in a selection of focal lengths, which can be used to produce a variety of lens angles. As with lenses, Pinhole, Zone Plate and Zone Sieves are capable of producing both wide-angle and telephoto results. Plates are available in a variety of focal lengths.

Many Skink models have screw threads, which allow the use of filters for contrast control, IR and neutral density. The same filter threads can also accommodate standard mount lens shades.

A Skink Pinhole Pancake is a great way to create beautifully soft and dreamlike imagery with either a digital or a film camera.

WPPD is going to be here soon. The Skink Pinhole Pancake can be a great way to participate.

This is a poster that I created for the WPPD event.

You can download a poster for WPPD here.

Read more about Pinhole Photography and other great photographic techniques in my book Rethinking Digital Photography.

NOTICE of Copyright: THIS POSTING AS WELL AS ALL PHOTOGRAPHS, GALLERY IMAGES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS ARE COPYRIGHT © JOHN NEEL AND ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE WRITER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR lensgarden.com. THE IDEAS EXPRESSED ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND THE AUTHOR.