This is an unpdate to last June’s Pinholed Nex5n post, so you may want to read that first.
At the beginning of July I found the Pinhole Shop on Ebay which not only sells pinhole cameras but also just the pinholes; and also has a very convenient chart as to what the distance between the film/sensor and pinhole should be. I ordered the smallest: 0.12mm (that they don’t seem to have for sale at the time I’m writing this), which if I remember correctly, should be place 13mm away from the film.
After receiving it and comparing it visually to the pinhole I had made – and the first one I had bought (Rising pinhole, 0.2mm) – I estimated mine as being around 0.15mm. So I replaced mine by the 0.12mm in my homemade lens after sanding of as much of the bodycap as I dared to prevent vignetting from the cap itself. I also made a second bodycap lens for mine, placing it at approximately 17mm from the sensor, as well as made one for the Rising lens, placing it at 30mm.
I am quite pleased with both the 0.12mm and 0.15mm pinholes! But must admit that I still find they often need a touch of sharpening to get the feel I’m happy with. The 0.12mm being the widest, seems the sharpest; an illusion caused by the (mind you, I’m not sure what the correct technical way to explain this would be) fact that the wider angle makes everything smaller so it looks sharper. If you zoom into a picture proportionally to the 0.15mm pinhole, the blur is identical; which is how it should be.
That said, a small tripod is useful, hand held shots really need a lot of light (the pinhole shop rates a 0.15mm hole at f112) to not add blur; so beware of the wind. Closeups are IMO where these lens can shine, the water glass in my pictures above was 3-4cm away!
BTW: the pinhole pictures from the previous Bluegrass La Roche festival post were taken with the 0.15mm pinhole.