First Impressions: Loreo Lens in a Cap

How ironic is it that the Loreo Lens in a Cap arrived the day after my Holga HL-N? And just as I was snapping some test shots on a more Holga-friendly sunny day!

Yesterday I experienced the yin to the Holga HL-N’s yang. While the Holga is clearly good at closeups, the Loreo’s forte is wide angle, making these two very different, almost complimentary products. By comparison, the aptly named Lens in a Cap, does not have focusing capability, but does have aperture capability, just the opposite to the HL-N’s fixed aperture and (somewhat) variable focus.

The packaging is also quite different, with a professional, finished look. Opening it, I find a carefully wrapped…cap. No front cap, no rear cap; just a cap. One with a very nice fit and finish. One that mounts to the camera like a cap, but locks in more like a lens. And there’s no play to speak of; it’s a precise fit.

Once installed, it just looks plain weird. And yet, it also looks as if it’s part of the camera itself. The Nikon badge on the pentaprism housing is actually flush with the cap! I choose my favorite f-stop, 5.6 (wide-open on this…lens), power up and compose. My, how bright the finder is, even at f/8! I instinctively reach for…something. A focus ring, an aperture ring. But there is nothing. Then I remember that the only control is the thumbwheel operated, “waterhouse stop” aperture located at the bottom of the lens. So, there’s nothing left to do but just trip the shutter. Well, I guess I could adjust the aperture and ISO.

I try to photograph the same subject matter as the Holga, but it’s not really practical. I can get in quite “close” with the Holga. Three feet away with a 90mm lens gets you pretty close. But, unless your’re using a very small aperture with this contraption, three feet is not an option. So, I point it at the trees in the distance and voilà! An image with all the charm of a disposable camera!

I chimp and zoom; it’s not sharp, not particularly colorful and OMG the ghosting! So, I dial in a smaller aperture, adjust the exposure, bump up the contrast and saturation, and the prognosis is better. I can see the ghosting clearly in the finder, so I point away from the sun, but it doesn’t improve much. However, a carefully placed hand does. I continue to experiment.

Something is amiss. The aperture jumps from f/8 to f/16. This is disturbing, since I know for a fact that on this camera, apertures smaller than f/11 generate sharpness-robbing diffraction. Since f/32 is off the table completely, it would have made much more sense to ditch it in favor of f/11. Still, I find that the images are indeed sharper at f/16 than f/8. This is probably because the images aren’t really sharp at all at either aperture.

Interestingly, f/64 becomes quite useful as a pinhole, just as the documentation states. Is it a true pinhole though? Certainly it behaves like one, producing sharp images from about six inches to infinity. But it seems to be aided by the lens, trimming off a little exposure time. So, it’s a new breed of pinhole, a “hybrid” pinhole if you will. This just bears more experimentation.

Upon reviewing the images, I find that there are a few that are quite acceptable, so this lens is capable of producing a reasonable image. But, there’s a learning curve to negotiate. There’s no distortion, and no chromatic aberration to speak of, with just a little bit of vignetting. In challenging lighting conditions it seems to respond well to flash.

Let’s face it; a genuine Nikon body cap goes for about nine bucks at B&H. This goes for $15.00, not even twice the price, and takes a much better picture. For that price, there’s a lot of fun to be had. There’s a challenge afoot in coaxing good images from this lens. And I’m always up for a challenge.