Can I make a pin hole camara out of a Hasselblad 500cm ??

Romanko

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Yes, you can. You can buy laser-cut pinholes. These have known focal length and f-number, unlike the ones you make yourself.

You might want to watch Martin Henson's recent video on Youtube where he converted an old plate camera to a pinhole.

There is a number of ways to mount pinholes to you camera, including gluing the pinhole to a camera body cap, using macro bellows or some sort of a lens adapter.

Use the film you are most familiar with. Knowing the f-number of the pinhole you should have no problem calculating
the exposure time. It is important to compensate for the reciprocity failure since your exposures are likely to be long.
Framing could be challenging. Using a normal lens of the same focal length as the pinhole is one option. An external viewfinder or a viewfinder app for a mobile phone could also be used.

While it is totally possible to turn you Hassy into a pinhole camera, a much simpler folder or even box camera would produce the same results (possibly for the price of a Hassy body cap). Good luck with your project.
 

cowanw

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Custom Camera Building.

Hasselblad Pinhole cap for 500C, 500C/M, 503CX, 501C, 501CM, 503CXi, 5

Pinhole cap with interchangeable pinhole inserts for Hasselblad V system cameras. Recommended pinhole size for Hasselblad V bodies is 0.35mm. Pinhole cap available in following sets: Set #1 - Pinhole cap, 0.35mm pinhole insert Set #2 - Pinhole cap, 0.25mm, 0,35mm and 0.45mm pinhole inserts...
customcamerabuilding.com
 

xkaes

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You can get or make pinhole body caps, but that restricts you to one focal length -- the distance from the pinhole to the film. If you want to use different focal lengths, you'll need pinholes of different sizes (diameters) and you'll need a way to change the distance between the pinhole and the film -- extension tubes, helicoids, bellows, etc.

http://www.subclub.org/fujinon/pinhole.htm
 

Donald Qualls

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xkaes said:
you'll need a way to change the distance between the pinhole and the film
Click to expand...

I've also seen conical body caps for some lens mounts, specifically for pinhole use -- these let you recess the pinhole inside the body.
 

Sirius Glass

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MARTIE

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I use a cable release with a lock. Once triggered, the mirror lifts up and the baffles open just like using the 'bulb' setting.
 

KinoGrafx

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There’s at least one pinhole design out there that skips the. ‘Blad body altogether and just uses the back
 

Hassasin

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Romanko said:
Yes, you can. You can buy laser-cut pinholes. These have known focal length and f-number, unlike the ones you make yourself.
Click to expand...

Any pinhole, commercial or home made, has its focal length and takes no effort to figure out what it is. Neither is precise measurement of pinhole, needed for focal length calculations, by use of either a scanner or microscope.
 

MattKing

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Romanko said:
Yes, you can. You can buy laser-cut pinholes. These have known focal length and f-number, unlike the ones you make yourself.
Click to expand...

Hassasin said:
Any pinhole, commercial or home made, has its focal length and takes no effort to figure out what it is. Neither is precise measurement of pinhole, needed for focal length calculations, by use of either a scanner or microscope.
Click to expand...

FWIW, the pinholes themselves have neither a focal length or an f/number.
They do have a size of hole though.

So there are two approaches:
1) if you start with a pinhole of a particular size, you can calculate from that size what hole to sensor/film plane distance - essentially a focal length - will optimize the resolution you can obtain in the image. Once you have that distance, you can adapt/modify an existing film transport mechanism (i.e. a camera body) to the hole to the sensor/film plane distance you need for optimal results, and then calculate from that what your effective aperture is in f/stops; or
2) if you start with a particular or approximate hole to sensor/film plane distance - which seems most likely to be your situation as you are attempting to make use of an existing camera body - then you can calculate from that distance what size hole you need in your pinhole to optimize resolution, and then in turn calculate from that what your effective aperture is in f/stops.
 

paul ron

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Pinhole Photography – History, Images, Cameras, Formulas

[An earlier version of this article was available at photo.net in the USA 1996–2016.An abridged Russian version: Камера-обскура.The Russian version is also available as a pdf file.The history secti…
jongrepstad.com

How to calculate the optimal pinhole size?

As far as I've understood, optimal diameter for pinhole size is calculated by formula where d - the optimal diameter for pinhole c - constant f - focal length (distance between pinhole and film/
photo.stackexchange.com

a body cap on almost any camera can be used to make a pin hole camera.
 

eli griggs

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There’s already a niceLu made pinhole cap in 75mm being made; with 75mm at F256 being/appearing to be the natural settings.

I wrote somewhere here about it, its name and maker.

Cheers
 

Donald Qualls

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paul ron said:
a body cap on almost any camera can be used to make a pin hole camera.
Click to expand...

While true, this will usually make a less wide angle (i.e. longer projection distance) than is usually preferred for a given format. A Hasselblad SWC with body cap would be closer to what people are used to seeing with pinhole.

Not to say it doesn't work -- I've use a pinhole cap on an M42 body, replaced the lens with a pinhole on a Polaroid 210 (and altered the meter system to allow auto exposure on 3000 speed film, back when I could still buy that), and replaced lens with pinhole on a number of other "simple" cameras, and it does work. It just doesn't have the very wide angle of view we often see with purpose-built pinhole cameras.
 

xkaes

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I never thought that there is a preferred angle of view for pinholes. Please enlighten us.
 

Donald Qualls

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xkaes said:
I never thought that there is a preferred angle of view for pinholes. Please enlighten us.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say "preferred" -- but most who build their own pinhole cameras seem to make them very wide to extremely wide, like an Altoids tin for medium format (or the old Altoids Gum tins for 35 mm strips), cigar box for 4x5 or 5x7, etc. And that has become the look we tend to expect from pinhole cameras, because it also lends itself to the extreme depth of field -- like a small object almost against the camera's front board juxtaposed against mountains.
 

blee1996

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I agree with @Donald Qualls that wide angle (and extreme wide angle) tend to be favored by pinhole camera manufacturers. My data points are from 4x5/8x10 cameras made by ZeroImage, RealityNotSoSubtle, Cosmos Circle, and Harman Titan. In 35mm focal length terms, they are often at 25mm focal length or wider. I guess the rationale being appearance of sharpness, and unique perspective for pinhole?
 

AnselMortensen

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No.
It cannot be done.
Don't bother trying!
LOL
 

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Greg_E2

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I made an 80mm for a Mamiya 645 film back, I think the shortest I could make was going to end up around 20mm. It was wood with a piece of sheet metal for the back to latch onto too. Was a fun little project but I'm not sure where I stashed the build pictures.
 

Sirius Glass

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