Click here to see my other pageMany people have emailed me to ask how to get started with pinhole photography. Finally, I have taken the time to put together some instructions. They are at the bottom of the page. First, a comic strip!
The first pinhole camera I remember seeing
was a Kodak cartridge pinhole camera that a teacher made when I was in
first grade.
It wasn't until 1994 that I started to make my own, beginning with the film canister camera which took the picture at left.
I made a hole in the film canister with a paper punch. I made a pinhole in a piece of heavy foil, then mounted the foil on the canister with electrician's tape in such a way that the pinhole was in the center of the larger punched hole. In a light-tight bag, I cut a three-inch piece of Kodak Ektachrome Elite 100 slide film and put it along the inside of the film canister opposite the pinhole. I put the lid on the film canister, and voila! A camera! The picture at left was exposed for about 15 minutes.
I now have several film-can cameras, though I find it inconvenient to try to develop 3-inch strips of film. If you can find an old SLR body (cheapest is best... how 'bout a Holga?) then you can use normal film. Just make a pinhole and put it where the lens would go. All of the photos on this page were taken on 35mm film.
There are other pages out there for the serious pinhole camera builder or for people who just want bookson pinholes. All the pages I found back in 1994 are gone, though, so you'll have to search on your own.
The disadvantages of pinhole cameras are many. They are slow-- I can't take a picture much faster than two seconds outside or 7-12 minutes inside with 100 ASA film! The focus, if you can call it that, leaves a lot to be desired. You can't really see for sure what will be in the picture.
There is an up side, though. The poor focus is consistent throughout the field of view-- in other words, the depth of field is infinite! This means that you can take a photo with some of an object VERY close to the camera, and still have the background in focus. If you can call it that. This picture of my car shows the extreme wide angle of the film-can camera. The exposure was about 5 seconds, and should have been about 2 seconds.
When you aren't sure what the camera will see, and you have to manually open a "shutter" of electrical tape for 2 seconds to 15 minutes, you have all the disadvantages of the view camera and a game of Russian Roulette, with none of the advantages (except the part about it being less lethal, most of the time, than Russian Roulette). It really makes photography a direct physical experience in a different way than those auto-everything super-zoom cameras I wish I could afford do.
The picture at left, with the word Mirus in the foreground, is the only one on this page which I couldn't resist color-correcting a little bit. As you can see, the screen resolution is low enough that with a little PhotoShop manipulation a pinhole photo can be pretty impressive, even shot on relatively small 35mm film. Of course, some would say that working on the photo in PhotoShop is the antithesis of the ultra-low-tech pinhole experience.
If you want to tell me about your personal pinhole page, or make comments about my images, please email me. I love email. Can't get enough of the stuff. If you would like to see what I do with my other free time, you might try my main page, which contains my photographs and cartoons.
If you are interested in seeing some really great pinhole images, you should surf around a little bit. I know there is one guy who does a lot of naked self-portraits, but I don't remember where his page is. I tried the same thing but kept my clothes on.
I used to have a list of other pinhole sites on this page. Seems like a lot of those links were no longer any good, so I removed them. Email me if you have a pinhole site you want me to link to. Of course, I always appreciate a link in return!
You can buy pinhole cameras, but for some reason they're incredibly expensive. It's much better to make them. The tricky part is the film, because although regular 35mm film is easiest to develop, other (larger) film is easier to handle. One of the easiest pinhole cameras to build is made from an oatmeal container and uses 4 x 5 film. 4 x 5 film is not in a roll (like 35mm) but in 4-inch by 5-inch sheets. It costs about ten dollars for a pack of ten sheets. You must handle the film in TOTAL darkness. You also have to get it developed at a place that knows how to develop sheet film. Ritz Camera can sometimes send it out to their outlab for processing, but they don't sell it.
Anyway, to make the oatmeal camera... get a cylindrical oatmeal box. Eat all the oatmeal. Then make a hole about the size of a dime in the side. Then get a disposable aluminum foil pie pan or lasagna pan-- the kind made from really thick foil. Cut a piece that will completely cover the hole in the oatmeal box. Now, using a sewing needle, gently poke a VERY SMALL hole in the center of the foil piece and tape it over the dime-sized hole so that the pinhole is not covered by the cardboard. Black electrical tape works well. Put tape around the bottom edge of the oatmeal box as well. Now, in a completely dark place (I mean COMPLETELY dark, if you are in there for 15 minutes and your eyes adjust to the darkness you should be unable to see any light) you can take out a sheet of the 4 x 5 film and put it into the oatmeal box opposite the pinhole. Then tape the lid on. Put a piece of tape over the pinhole.
If you are sure that you've sealed up the oatmeal box so that it's completely lightproof, then you are ready to take a picture! Go outside and uncover the pinhole for a few seconds. You have to keep the box totally still, so put it on a steady surface and uncover the pinhole for about 5 seconds and then replace the tape. Now you have to figure out a lightproof container to put the film in so that Ritz can develop it... If the place where you bought the film has any old discarded packages from 4 x 5 film, then you can use one of those-- make sure that you use the bag inside the cardboard sleeve so that the package is light-tight.
There used to be places that made kits so that you could make a pinhole camera with 110 or 126 film. That would be really easy, since those films come with their own cartridge. But I don't know if these kits are still available.