Ceramic Pinhole

[Robert Kennedy]

A few months ago I made, what I think is one of the few 4x5 pinhole cameras made almost entirely out of clay.

Yes, this camera is ceramic. Everything but the pinhole is made of stoneware.

And yes, it is heavy. And yes, it works. It even takes standard 4x5 holders.

And yes, I am crazy.

Anyone interested in the details and instructions?

 

[medform-norm]

Anyone interested in the details and instructions?

Congratulations to you who have joined the club of looney gear fixers.
Yes, of course we want details! Instructions may not be necessary. Most of all, we want to see what it looks like (for all I know you could have modeled it to looke like Donald Duck) and what it does when fed properly.

FYI: there is a Hungarian/Dutch guy who turned a bunker into a pinhole. Would that count as sort of ceramic too by your standards?

FYI2: there is another guy who made a 4x5" camera out of a cardboard box. It worked. I don't know how many exposures could be made with it before it wore out though.

FYI3: we made a paper pinhole camera by turning a book into a pinhole camera - and took pics with it of a library - how appropriate, no?

 

[jjstafford]

Before someone claims to be the first with a pinhole camera, he might check The Pinhole Journal. The variations are too great to list here, but include a camera that did a full year exposure, the mouth camera and, yes, the "a**hole" camera. Pardon my French, but I'm just quoting the literature.

 

[Robert Kennedy]

I posted images of the Ceramicamera in the technical gallery.

 

[modafoto]

Nice camera!

How much does it weigh? It must be quite heavy.

 

[Robert Kennedy]

Thanks for the compliment.

It weighs a little over 5lbs. So it really isn't that heavy. I will be looking to attach a tripod socket soon.

The nice thing is that it takes standard holders. So it isn't a "one shot" pinhole where you have to insert the paper/film, take the picture, then unload it.

The hardest part of making it was calculating the shrinkage of the clay. Clay can shrink from anywhere from 5-15% after bisquing, so you have to watch the measurements and be willing to take a dremel to the sides a bit (better to be too small...)

 

[madvax]

Another ceramic pinhole from Norway.

 

[Robert Kennedy]

Nice design. If I ever have access again, I'd like stretch out some more in this medium. What I'd really like to do is see how funky I could get and keep the standard 4x5 holder format.

 

[noseoil]

If you want to set up a tripod mount, use epoxy (just the hardware variety will work) and mount a nut in a block of wood first, wax a bolt so the threads don't foul. Once the nut is bonded into the wood (dremel), wax a bolt the same size as the nut and bond the wood block to the bottom or side of the camera. You could also make a hole in the bottom of the camera and bond the nut into the camera, but I think it might be safer to thae the fastening outside of the camera. tim