DIY Pinhole Camera in 10 Steps

I decided to try pinhole cameras this past week. First I had to make one. For my camera body, I selected a standard 35mm film case -- the black plastic type with gray lid that Kodak film comes in. Additional tools you'll need are black electrician's tape, the smallest pin you have, a pair of scissors, a compass, and some colored electricians tape or white out. Also, you'll need some photo paper.

I suggest photo paper because you'll have to cut your medium to size, which can be done with little difficulty in a lit darkroom but great difficulty in total blackness, as you'd need to do with film. Most paper is about ISO 6, so expect exposure times for this camera in the 90-105 second range on a sunny, cloudless day. At dusk, exposures could be in excess of 150 seconds.

The following pictures will demonstrate how to make this simple, cheap camera. If you have some photo paper developer and kids, this would be a great project to introduce them to analog photography.


Supply list: A black 35mm film case, a compass, scissors, some tape, photo paper, a pin, and some photo paper or other light-proof paper (such as 120 film backing paper) to make the shutter.


Step 1: Take the film case and pin. Puncture the film case in the exact center. Fortunately, this is easy to find. Film cases either have a tiny spru mark where the makers injected plastic into the mold or the ones with recycling information have a "2" on the bottom. The center is inside the "2's" loop.


Step 2: Actually puncture the hole.


Step 3: Check the hole to make sure it is clear of obstructions. Hold the case up to your eye and look at something with detail or a light source. If you wear glasses, you should still see through the hold with relative clarity.


Step 4: With the compass, measure the lid's inner radius.



Step 5: You will need to be in a dark room for this step. Using photo paper (in this image a business card served as the analog), draw a circle on the BACK -- non-emulsion -- side with the compass. The back is the non-shiny side.



Step 6: Cut out the photo paper circle. This will be the medium that records your image.



Step 7: Place a rolled-on-itself piece of masking or cellophane tape on the canister lid and place the paper (circle-side down, shiny-side up) on the tape.


Step 8: Using the photo paper or, preferably, backing paper from 120 film, cut a small (0.5 cm X 0.5 cm) square.





Step 9: Cut a length of black electricians tape, fold the end over to make a convenient tab, and then tape the cut paper from Step 8 on the bottom. Affix the tape to the bottom of the canister with the paper over the pinhole. Also make sure that you can peel the shutter back to exposure the paper inside.

You should probably make the shutter before cutting the paper circles. Place the lid, with the paper, back on the canister and your camera is functionally ready.


Step 10: Decorate your camera. This will probably be the best part if you have kids doing it. For me, I used colored electricians tape to make a different pattern on each camera. That way, I don't accidentally double-expose an image.


And the results! After exposure, developing, fixing, drying, and scanning, this is what you can expect. More tomorrow on what you're seeing and why.

A Year In Photos -- Week Fifteen

Well, this week saw a number of changes in plans. And this week's posts will be interesting because of the five rolls of film I took last week, I only finished three. Of those three, all had to be developed by a local lab. That lab hasn't finished any of the film I dropped off, so I have nothing to scan and post about yet. Normally -- I'm pulling back the curtain here -- I write all of the week's posts on Sunday afternoon and then set them up to go out at the same time every day. This week, since nothing's been scanned, I don't yet know what this week's images will be. So I have no images to foreshadow this week's posts.

Also, I tried -- TRIED -- to use the 60-year-old Agfa film in the F3. It shattered. Not the F3, the film. I have part of the roll left, but may not have a camera that can use it. So that experiment may be a resounding failure. Fortunately, I was near a Walgreens when I realized I had a problem and picked up some Walgreens color film. I haven't gotten that back from the processor, either.

But I had a backup plan and have some photos from that -- a pinhole camera experiment. So tonight we'll look at some photos from a camera made, by me, from a 35mm film case, some electricians taps, and some photo paper.

In the interim, here are the camera lineups I have for you this coming week:

Monday:Kodak Pony 828 (572675) and Ilford PANF 50 ISO. THis is a new camera to me this week. Kodak made 35mm and 828 Pony cameras. This uses 828 film. 828 is 35mm film without perforations on a roll like 120 film. So my images will include the peforations on them, which could be neat. Using this presents a few challenges because I had to respool 35mm film onto paper, and that's always a challenge. But, I'm optimistic that this will return good, or at least interesting, results.

Tuesday: Kodak Retina Ia (605864) and Agfa 100 ISO. This will be the little 1A's first outing this year and may be the first time I'd run monochrome film through it. I'll also take the Contina from last week out to try and finish that roll.

Wednesday: Kodak Retina IIa (EK624702) and Foma 100 ISO film. Kodak did not make, in my view, a lot of great cameras. They made a lot of cameras, great film, great paper, and created modern photography, but they did not specialize in top-tier equipment. The Retina line from the 1950s stands out from that because they are great cameras. So, why not use both of my retinas this week? I'll also take the SRT 102 and try to finish that roll.

Thursday: Pentax Spotmatic SP 1000 (5815145) and Vivitar 135mm (28225187) with a yellow filter and Adox 400 CHM PRO.

Friday: Voigtlander Perkeo I (3645721) and Ilford HP5 400 ISO. This is a VERY fast film for this camera, so we'll see how this goes.

In addition, I have to take my K-7 into work every day because I have an assignment to photograph one of our sites, but I haven't been told which day. So next week should have no shortage of photographs. In the interim, here are a few I know I'll share with you this week.

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Did Nikon Intend FTN to be an Acronym?

Instead of taking the F3 out last Friday, I decided to finish off the partial roll in the Nikkormat FTN from two weeks ago. This is with my 43-86mm Nikkor lens and Ilford Delta 100. In exchange, I took the F3 out on Saturday and will have a special installment resulting from that trip every Saturday until May. I didn't track this roll's exposure data, so today we'll dispatch with the commentary and have only photos.

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Blue Filter, Happy Results

MY Sigma 35-80 is definitely my most versatile Pentax lens, my favorite lens, and definitely in my top five lenses. My main goal for this shoot was to test how the Ilford P4 responds to a blue filter. Monday we saw the results with a CPL. Yesterday, a yellow filter. Yesterdays images were above average for a single-days run. The yellow filter certainly contributed to that. The blue filter reduced contrast on this shoot because the evening light was at the peak-blue time right before the sun began turning everything red. But some of the results came back nicely anyhow, especially the Millennium Tower shot.


1/250th, f4. Locks. I wonder what it means?


1/125th, f22. Millennium Tower. So this image is somewhat of a success. The main question is why? First, you may need to know what Millennium Tower looks like. Check that out here. Blue glass drapes the tower. A blue filter will lighten blue colors. Millennium Tower's blue curtain is already light blue, so the Tiffen 80A blue filter will further lighten it on monochrome film. The reflection on the lower left corner made that area of the tower less blue, darkening it on the final image.


1/60th, f4. One of my favorite sculptures in The City, this is an incredibly detailed tribute to the working man. I love that it's also in the middle of the financial district.


1/60th, f4.


1/30th, f4.

A Distinctly American Pyramid

Last Wednesday I was scouting downtown for a series of statues called the Corporate Goddesses. My goal was to figure out if I have gear which can photograph them in a manner which does justice or not. The jury is still out. While I was in downtown, I stopped by the Trans America Pyramid to get some architectural shots, for fun.


1/60th, f16. I've read criticisms of this lens for being dull or unsharp. I agree it is difficult to focus. However, when focused, it presents incredibly sharp details and nice contrasts. The color rendition is also very good. Color rendition is important when photographing in monochrome. Poor color rendition translates into poor tones and contrasts. Good color rendition improves tonal range and increases photo quality.


1/60th, f4. This lens' only problem is that at its widest it's an f4 lens. This directly relates to the focusing difficulty noted above. Because it's an f4 lens, it lets less light into the viewfinder than an f2 or f1.4 lens. That complicates focusing as details become obscured in shadow and fine focal points are disrupted by the darkened viewfinder.


1/60th, f16. This lens is never truly 'soft' like some wide-angle lenses. But at f8 and smaller, this lens become exceedingly sharp. This image loses some sharpness because it was heavily keystoned to correct for the drastic upward angle.


1/125th, f8. Here the lens' abilities are on display. For an ultra-wide, it does a marvelous job of correcting horizontal lines. A few of the coming images, as well as the first image in this series, have full-frame horizontal lines. This was intentional to explore how well this lens maintains plane at 18mm. This lens does quite well.


1/250th, f8. Honestly, not my favorite shot. I needed to be a step or two to the left to make all the lines even out on plane.


1/60th, f8. Inside the Pyramid's footings. This is an interesting place if the goal is photographing merging and diverging lines.


1/125th, f8. Along the top you can see the amount this lens bends horizontal lines. Are there better lenses for rectillinear correction? Of course. Are there better lenses that would cost me $52.15? No.


1.60th, f8. An interesting quirk of this lens, the bottom of the lens corrects for barrel distortion better than the top half. Curious.


1/125th, f4. Let's end today on a note of whimsy: Trans America Pyramid topiary.

Macros for Tuesday

For years my Sigma 50mm macro lens was my favorite. It's still top five, for sure, but as my work has changed my lens taste changed. Now, I more favor wide-angle lenses And I've taken so many macros in my life, now, that I struggle to find new, creative ways to use this incredibly nice lens.


1/500th, f2.8. Wide open, some edge details can be a bit soft on this lens, but it still performs with great precision.


1/125th, f5.6. A few stops down and it's noticeably sharper. The lens stays this sharp or better for the rest of the aperture settings.


1/125th, f4. A fountain bubbbler in Yerba Buena Gardens.


1/60th, f4.


1/60th, f6.3. Edited to increase contrast.

Adaptable does not Equal Pairable

Pairing my first SLR with my Dad's old Mamiya/Sekor DTL 1000 kit lens -- a 55mm 1:1.7 -- seemed a great pairing. With the M42 adapter, it ought to work brilliantly on the K1000 and deliver high-quality images. However, that wasn't exactly the case across the board and while a few images turned out, most of the roll was not well exposed. The K1000 has through-the-lens metering, and the shots which turned out were generally shot at f1.7. So I suspect that when I tried stopping down, the meter compensated for the available light versus what aperture it THOUGHT I would use, and provided an incorrect reading. That said, the shots that turned out show why Ilford P4 is a superb film for cameras.


1/125th, f16. This was the one shot on the roll that turned out well not wide-open. That's mostly because I calculated the exposure myself and didn't trust the camera. I should have done that for all of them.


The P4 film had some problems with black. I took some shots of the 4th Street bridge to see if the P4 would render black as it does above, or in a more silver manner as it does with my dogs' fur. As shown in the first image, this film can be a very-high-contrast performer with good tonal range, and in the first shot it is. This indicates that this film works best with subject that present a large tonal scale.


1/1,000th, f1.8. The kissing couple was back so I decided to go for a better shot of them. Wide open, this lens is very soft at infinity. In this shot, that provides a fairly nice result.

A Year In Photos -- Week Fourteen

A hugely exciting week coming up both on the new-picture and picture-capturing fronts. This past week the Ilford P4 performed extremely well and there are a number of nice shots to share. In terms of capturing new shots, this week sees five new films being used, including at least one that I will never shoot again because it hasn't been made since World War II. In fact, I'm not 100% certain I'll get any shots from it because it's somewhat brittle. I managed to get it out of its old spool (that isn't compatible with modern 35mm cameras) and into a new spool, then into my Nikon F3. However, the leader kept cracking and breaking apart. But, how that the film is loaded, it may yield results. Don't hope for too much -- it's 14 DIN rated, meaning 20 ISO. Ultra-slow speeds like that have a theoretical shelf life of eternity if properly stored, but I have no way of knowing if this was properly stored. We'll find out next week.

This past week yielded solid results. The Ilford P4 is a superb film. So I bought another spool of it. I'd rather never run out, but someday, in about 115 rolls, I will. But the P4 ought to last me a few years at least. In addition, some new film coming up in the next few weeks will include Kodak Vision 3 motion picture film. I picked up two types for a net HALF-MILE of film for less than a single spool of TMax 400. But we'll wait a few weeks to get into those.

In the interim, here's a preview of what's coming this week:













For this coming week, here's the lineup:

Monday: Balda Juwella (732130), Fuji Velvia 50. The Juwella is a 6X9 folding camera. It's always been decent with monochrome, but I've never shot slide or color film with it. So this will be a chance to shoot eight very large slide shots with a very nice film. This is the same film I used the other week for this post.

Tuesday: In keeping with the Fuji Velvia theme, Minolta SRT 102 (2042109), Tamron 28-70 (9003019), and Fuji Velvia 50. This is a new lens I picked up for less than $20 on Saturday at a thrift store. It's in pristine shape. Also, it's an Adaptall II, so with a few adapters it may appear at some point on my Pentax or Nikon cameras.

Wednesday: Nikon F3 (1635441), Nikkor-S 50mm (818328), Agfa 15 DIN. The 15 DIN film is about 20 ISO -- hyper slow. Because it expired in 1948, I'm going to shoot four shots at ISO 12 and four at ISO 20. That increases the odds that something will turn out. This will be the slowest film I have ever shot, and because of its age it may return no results. But it's worth trying anyway.

Thursday: Zeiss Contina Matic II (T81756), Ilford 50. You may have detected a trend by now: very slow films this week. Nothing exceeding 50 ISO. That wasn't an accident.

Friday: Pentax K2 (7084574), Pentax-M 50mm (3007577), Kodak Vision 3 50D. This is a motion picture film, 50 ISO, daylight balanced. It will give the Velvia a solid run for its money on which returns the best 50 ISO color images.