Remember that pinhole camera you made in elementary school?  The one made out of an oatmeal box or maybe an old shoe-box?  If you're lucky, you still have that camera project, but most likely that camera was crushed, recycled, or otherwise discarded between then and now.  Hopefully, though, you remember the experience of seeing the first images that came from your rustic camera obscura.  Pinhole cameras have a way of capturing images that our bare eyes just can't see.  While our eyes have evolved to see things clearly, follow motion, and maintain focus, pinhole cameras produce images that are soft, dreamlike, and blur motion to the point of even making moving objects disappear altogether.  Outside of being light-tight, the difference in the quality of the images from pinhole cameras really comes down to the thinness of the metal (or other material) and the roundness of the pinhole itself.  Keeping these qualities in mind, it's difficult to find a better pinhole manufacturer than Reality So Subtle.

Reality So Subtle is a company based in France that started production of cameras in 2011.  Its founder and camera designer James Guerin has brought some of the most innovative pinhole cameras to the market.  With a variety of very popular medium format cameras available, large format cameras were bound to follow. 

The Reality So Subtle 4x5 has the tripod mounts on the short and long side of the camera body, which gives it the ability to shoot with the "rise" movement in either landscape or portrait mode.  Its 15mm focal length and 0.2mm aperture give the 4x5 camera an advertised f/175.  As with all pinhole cameras, though, metering need not be that precise.  Controlling for variables such as film reciprocity failure, brightness of the overall image, and even changing light conditions sometimes make calculating the "correct" exposure more art than science.  Ultimately though, the wide latitude of color or black and white film means it's nearly impossible to get nothing usable from a negative. 

The flexibility of the Reality So Subtle goes beyond the three pinholes, however.  The large adjustable brace on the back of the camera can be adjusted to fit virtually any regular 4x5 film holder, including the 4x5 instant film holders from Polaroid.  Given these options, there's really no limit to the images you can produce with these cameras.

The Reality So Subtle 4x5 camera is no longer in production from the company, so the used market is not just your best option, but really your only option for getting one of these into your collection.  The hardest part is finding an owner who will part with one.  If you do, make sure it has a better life than your old oatmeal box.