The Hand Made Vermeer 6×17 Pinhole Camera

This camera is a monster.

I picked up a pinhole camera at Blue Moon Camera in Portland, and it changed things for me. It was only a 6×6 with an aperture of f/256 or so, but it is nothing compared to this guy.

The Camera Specs

The Vermeer 6×17 Pinhole Camera makes a six by seventeen centimeter negative on a curved plane, which helps eliminate some distortion. It has an aperture of f/300, and a nice sliding door for a shutter. Loading it is a learning curve, and metering is still something I’m working on.

Getting Out and Getting Some Use

I was lucky enough to find one in the United States for a good price, but i found out this guy makes all his cameras by hand out of Poland. He has a little following, though his cameras are mostly unknown.

This Vermeer Pinhole Camera was a way to slow down even more (every film photographers favorite thing), and learn a bit about panorama-style shots. The painful thing is that it isn’t really possible to perfectly line up your frame. Even though I’m sure I could find it, I am not totally sure what the focal length is. With that, I tend to line up my frame the best I can and fire away.

My very first roll was Kodak Tmax 100 (Expired in 2020). I shot this pretty close to the end of 2023.

Unfortunately, I did not have a good understanding of how stops work with smaller apertures. I underexposed all four frames by four to five stops of light.

Now, I did push it about four stops in development and I cooked it at 75 degrees Fahrenheit rather than my usual 68. I was also in my rush-through-it phase in developing, so I sent it through Rodinal at a 1+25 dilution. between that and a little extra adjusting in the initial scan, I think it came out ok.

The next time around, I used Ilford FP4 plus. It could have used a bit more light. The negatives aren’t really usable for much, but scanning wasn’t too much of a chore.

Almost no matter what, the images came back much softer than I was expecting. My Zero Image Pinhole has quite a bit sharper results. It’s still hard to beat such a massive negative.

Over the summer of 2024, I had to take it out with some color negative film. I packed expired Portra 160VC and some very expired Fujifilm 400 CH. To compensate, I rated the Portra 160 at ISO 40 and this was one of the images.

I walked right near the Old Mill District in Bend, OR, and that’s pretty close to where I got this frame.

The expired stuff needed to be corrected a little, but that was to be expected. Overall, I like the dreaminess of the black and white, but for middle-of-the-day sunshine, color film is where it’s at with this big guy.

I did learn my lesson after shooting a few frames into the sun. My best diagnosis is that the aperture is a little rough and the light reflects off of imperfections on the opening on the way in.

I don’t know anyone else with this camera, so I haven’t had too much discussion about it, but this was enough for me to not shoot into the sun anymore.

It’s One More Thing to Learn

It really is a cool looking camera. It’s well-made and the results are pretty spectacular for it being made by a man in Poland who isn’t especially well-known in the US.

I’ve thought more than once about picking up another camera from him, but one should be enough to hold me down for at least another few seasons.

As winter approaches there might be a few projects in the works from this panoramic monster.