Making a pinhole camera

iluvphotography · May 23, 2008

Does anyone have an experience with building a pinhole camera that works. I tried online resources and I find conflicting techniques. Please let me know if you have a link to a good step by step instruction that will work.

Garbz · May 23, 2008

Give the very DIY nature of this type of thing, and the fact that the technique often involves making a hole in a piece of cardboard with a pin, is there anything stopping you from just experimenting and finding out which solution works?

Now I have seen some formulas on the net, but given that this is the most ghetto of DIY photography projects even a formula may be useless.

iluvphotography · May 24, 2008

what about the film? can I use a normal 35mm film?

jedithebomber · May 24, 2008

I can't imagine it would be too hard to make a pinhole camera. Think about whats in a regular film camera and distill it down to the very basics. You need a lightproof box, some way to hold and advance the film. A hole to allow light in, and a shutter to block the hole. Get yourself some ducktape and and old cardboard box. Im thinking the hardest part would be figuring out the distance you need the film for any particular size of hole or film. Then again, I am an engineering student, so this stuff comes naturally to me.

To be helpfull, I found this link, you may want to search the instructables site for some more ideas.

http://www.instructables.com/id/35mm-pinhole-camera/

EDIT: In fact, do a search for "pinhole camera" on instructables.com, just found a whole slew of how-to's!

Garbz · May 24, 2008

You can use any film. I've seen pinhole view cameras with 6x7 backs. I've also seen a pinhole panoramic camera which uses 120 film I think it ended up being 6x17 or something like that.

KevinDks · May 24, 2008

iluvphotography said:
what about the film? can I use a normal 35mm film?

You can use a 35mm camera (or a dSLR come to that) if you have the original body cap for it (the round plastic thing that fits on the front of a new camera when no lens is fitted). Send it to these people and they will fit a lazer etched pinhole to it and send it back with an exposure calculator:

http://www.pinholesolutions.co.uk/

They have various ready built film models you can buy as well. Expensive though.

Kevin

Josh66 · May 24, 2008

KevinDks said:
You can use a 35mm camera (or a dSLR come to that) if you have the original body cap for it (the round plastic thing that fits on the front of a new camera when no lens is fitted). Send it to these people and they will fit a lazer etched pinhole to it and send it back with an exposure calculator:

http://www.pinholesolutions.co.uk/

They have various ready built film models you can buy as well. Expensive though.

Kevin

No need to send it off anywhere, you could do it yourself if you wanted to.

You just need to find the center of the cap, and make a small hole there.
One way you could do it is to take the end of a metal coat hanger and melt your way almost all the way through the cap, then make a little hole with a needle.

notelliot · May 24, 2008

Garbz said:
...but given that this is the most ghetto of DIY photography projects even a formula may be useless.

ever made a camera obscura?

Rhys · May 24, 2008

I used a biscuit tin and print paper. The hole I made with a pin and the shutter was black electrical tape.

Overkill-F1 · May 25, 2008

I made a pinhole camera that made 8 x 10" paper negatives. I used a resin coated, grade 2 paper and then contact printed the negative onto another 8x10 to get a positive. I had good results. You have to be sure and get a paper that doesn't have anything printed on the back or you'll see it in the positive print.
The camera was a tube (cut about 10" long) from a roll of carpeting, I made two caps for the ends, one was removable to load/reload. The paper negative curled inside along one side of the tube, the lens was a piece of tin foil on the opposite side of the tube with a pinhole, the shutter was a piece of electrical tape. I even put a threaded tripod mount on the end. I'm trying hard to remember, but I think I was using a 5 minute exposure on a sunny day.
...Terry