• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

6x9 DIY PINHOLE camera

Just out of curiosity anyone ever use a long section of pipe to do pinholes of the sun?
 
Chuck1 said:
Just out of curiosity anyone ever use a long section of pipe to do pinholes of the sun?
Click to expand...

My brother is an avid 'stargazer' and has an observatory somewhere in 'La France Rurale' (lesser light pollution), and owns a variety of different telescopes, and is even dealing in these (mostly used).
He once told me that the older Eastern-Europe made telescopes (of witch he has different models) have a pinhole plate that could be slid in the 'tube' to protect the system when observing the sun, at least that's how I understood it...
And I don't really know if in that case the pinhole acts as an optical element.

But I don't know if this is the right answer to you question...
 
Blackwrap (found at cine/studio suppliers) is just heavy, all-black aluminum foil and is great for making pinholes. And you could make several lifetimes worth of pinholes from one roll
 
Chuck1 said:
Just out of curiosity anyone ever use a long section of pipe to do pinholes of the sun?
Click to expand...

Yes, with two 10 foot lengths of black plastic drain pipe with a .07 inch pinhole in a shutter at one end and an improvised sheet film back at the other. The top 1/100 shutter speed greatly overexposed 5x7 litho film. Sun diameter on film was just under 3 inches. The front of the camera was suspended from a telephone pole and the shutter was triggered by a string. Aiming was by centering the shadow of the front on a flange at the rear.
 

Attachments

  • eclipse01.jpg
    127.1 KB · Views: 73
Last edited:
I made a long pinhole camera for viewing the sun, from a ~ 6 foot long (~ 2 meters) narrow box used for shipping skis. It was for viewing, not photography. I cut away part of the side near the bottom for viewing, put a white piece of paper on the bottom as a projection screen, and used it to show people a partial and annular eclipse. The sun is half a degree in diameter, so even with a 2 meter long "camera" the image of the sun is only about 17mm in diameter.

If you want to make a pinhole quickly, try using the heavy metal foil that is used to seal coffee cans, or the foil bags that coffee comes in. It's sturdier than kitchen aluminum foil, but thinner than sheet metal stock, and easy to get a lot so you can just keep sticking pins into pieces of it until you get a pinhole that you are happy with.
 

That rick with the coffee tin foil is a good idea, thank you!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register