Elenco Lens x Pinhole experiment camera

[jeffreythree]

I assembled one of these little cameras this afternoon. It is geared towards teaching kids and is partially assembled(ie. shutter assembly), and has an interesting little science book with it. I did not find much on them, but it looked neat being a 35mm plastic lens camera and a pinhole all in one for less than $13 shipped. You can switch apertures disks with a wonderfully descriptive selection of none, large, small, and pinhole. It even has a rudimentary close focus scale using a telescoping lens mount and a frosted plastic piece to fit inside to teach how the image appears on the film plane. Right off the bat the shutter hung up and others have had the same problem. The shutter spring was installed upside down at the factory; so just open it up by removing the 2 little screws and flip it over. Also, don't put a 36 exposure roll in it since there is no room. Film is just left to its own devices to roll up in a chamber on the take up side. They give a small mention to use 12 and 24 ct. rolls about 20 pages in to the book. A couple of pinhole shots are drying right now using a 6 ct. roll of expired Fuji 100 color film processed as B&W with Diafine(the rest was cut off for a mint tin pinhole camera), and I hope to give the lens/shutter combo a try tomorrow. I needed time to mull over what oculd be done to fix the shutter.

 

[mrjr]

Thanks for posting this. I'll have to check it out.

 

[jeffreythree]

Well, that was one crazy test roll. Setting the lens at infinity focus means nothing inside of about 100 feet is in focus. Setting it where the book says focus should be around 30cm worked better for non distance landscape shots, sort of in focus from ~5'-50'. Pinhole works as expected and the extension tube is kind of interesting acting like a zoom for cropping the foreground when extended. It also gives some rudimentary f-stop control from about 140-180 I think. I used some Kentmere 100 developed in Diafine and 2 seconds was a bit to long with the pinhole and the middle f-stop(larger disk) was about right with the fixed unknown shutter speed. I think I will go out on a bright day with the frosted plastic and a magnifier, and see just where the extension tube marks focus. A couple of shots from the test roll, pinhole and lens: