[Leica] Pinhole on Leica

[cif at halcyon.com (Larry Bullis)]

This digest thing is very strange, but how many emails do I want 
emails/day? 

Tom Johnston mentioned that I am the first he knew who ever put a 
pinhole on a Leica but I've lost the reference somehow. 

Tom, you have one of my pinholes, and I may be the first you know, but 
I'm definitely not the first to do this.  Dominic Stroobant beat me out 
on that one, and I am absolutely confident that he was not the first 
either.  I believe I have a copy of an issue of that Willard Morgan 
serial encyclopedea which mentions it and I think it goes back before 
either of us, or Dominic, too, were even imaginary concepts.

The pinhole you have is actually the very first Leica M body cap pinhole 
that I ever made (1976).  It was made in brass shim stock.  It is a very 
good one and I can prove that with images, but over the years, I've 
changed my methods.  I used a feeler guage, a fly tying vise, and a 
needle with tape around it at just the right diameter to make them 
then.  Now I use a 50 x projection microscope and produce them in pure 
silver using a polished ball peen hammer with a polished anvil.  The 
ones I am making now are actually domed.  They are most likely somewhat 
better pinholes, in that they are work hardened and quite probably much 
more precise, as well as blacker. The edge of the hole is very sharp, 
like a knife.  I make them too small, enlarge them, then make them 
smaller again expanding the metal with the hammer, hone the edges with a 
stone, then I blacken them with toner. 

I don't do a lot of this (how many pinholes can one person actually 
use?).  But I think I have it down pretty well now.  Having done jewelry 
in grad school with Ken Cory has its advantages, as does having 
acquaintances who are physicists.  People like those micro drilled and 
laser drilled pinholes, but they just don't know what they are missing!

Using them on Leica is convenient, fun, and easy, but the most fun is in 
building very weird cameras that will produce images that can't possibly 
be visualized by humans and doing things with them that we, as 
photographers, must stretch to understand and never quite get there.  
Now that gets interesting!!