Do you have a pinhole camera objective?

When I first started taking pinhole pictures it was just to see what happens. I discovered that it was a very good way to take blurry pictures. I also discovered that many pinholer's were using and assortment of cameras shapes, film processing and pinholes to made some rather interesting pieces of art.

Eventually I discovered that a lot of 19th and early 20th century photography was done with pinhole cameras and the photos were quite good. So my personal quest became to duplicate these results.

So, I was curious what other objective we being pursued by pinhole camera users.

Hmmm. Well my first pinhole experience was in the 1960s when I placed a chunk of aluminum foil over the front of a macro bellows on a 35mm camera, poked a hole in it with a needle, and tried photographing a model railroad setup. I was hoping to take advantage of the huge depth of field. It sort of worked; I used the setup to finish the end of a started roll of color film. I can't remember if it was slide or color negative. I do remember the colors were pretty bad, as if reciprocity for the different color layers got out of whack. I was elated to see something recognizable, but overall, not too impressed with the results.

I pretty much went back to lenses until 2005 when I saw something about Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. I made a plywood lensboard for an old B&J 4x5 Press that lurks in the shadows here and successfully produced some images. I haven't missed WPPD since. In real life I operated in various mechanical and electrical disciplines for many years, and have been a compulsive tinkerer since about age 4 or 5, so building pinhole cameras wasn't all that intimidating. I've since done a pinhole body cap for my Bronica SQ-A, then went on to a 4x5 wide angle box, and sort of extrapolated some of the concepts I used in that to build an 8x10. I think I've confessed already in these forums that I maybe enjoy the camera building as much -- or even more -- than the photography! I think there is a sense of participation in the worldwide event that adds some interest and excitement -- seeing elegant renditions of amazing scenes from all over the world, many places I will never get near in person. It's also fun to see some of the group activities that get posted with eight year olds using paint cans and such. So there's a certain warm fuzzy in being part of that.

In the gear, I do my own dimple and sand pinholes and take it as a challenge to try to produce really clean and sharp results, both the pinholes, and the photos. But other than one or two years, I admit WPPD was my only pinhole outing for the year over the ensuing 15 years or so. All of the lens-less work in this millennium is out in my PBase galleries for the 1.3 after tax cents it may be worth.

I'm still interested in trying a pinhole body cap on a digital camera to see if I can get a feel as to how much of the fuzzy results I've seen from others is a consequence of format versus craftsmanship issues. Alas, the body cap (for my venerable EOS 40D) has been floating around here somewhere for about four or five years and it appears no elves have taken up the task -- oh well!

Probably one of my larger ongoing challenges is figuring out scenes to point the camera at. For pinholery I like structural/architectural stuff with lots of bold lines, shapes, and shadows -- after all, with 7 or 8 second exposures, catching a tennis match is a poor choice! Because I've tried to be proper and correct and shoot the WPPD stuff on that very day, I've occasionally had weather related difficulties, and a couple of recent years I got trapped in some scheduling conflicts. In those cases, I've still managed to do something but had to be guided more by expedience than photographic vision.

This year I'm spread pretty thin, but I still plan to be out there on April 26th. (Stay tuned!)

(Sheese -- bit of an essay -- dunno if it tells you anything!)

I like the fact that your thread title has a built in pun!
My "objective" is to have fun, and to attempt to free myself a bit from my natural propensity for anal retentiveness.
I get some of the same benefits from using box cameras and old folders.

I got into it via a strange path. I read somewhere about solargraphy, thought that was neat, so I bought some photopaper and made some pinhole tin cans to leave out for weeks at a time. Later on, I thought, well if I had some dektol, I could also use them as pinhole cameras.. so I got some dektol and fixer and developed them in my closet.... then I thought, well I could also put the paper into this old camera I found in the garage, found f295 and that there were people already doing that. After that I made bigger and better pinhole cameras, and I still like the paper negatives enough that I never found a need to move on to film! ( although, once I got the dektol and fixer, I wanted to get an enlarger and start making prints from film again too, and that's how I got back into photography again. ) Like Matt said, the objective is to have fun and make some good pictures. The paper is inexpensive enough that it doesn't keep me from trying something new or different or worry that I'm wasting materials. It's actually pretty amazing how much detail can be on a big 8x10 pinhole image. There's also something fundamentally satisfying that the light comes off the subject directly onto the paper with nothing in between... there's a kind direct connection... oddly enough I don't think of pinhole as really a part of my photography hobby, somehow in my mind it's separate and different and more carefree activity than when I have a film camera.

@DWThomas, do tell about and show your tooling for the pinhole-making!

Very shortly after buying my DSLR, I bought some body caps, LOL
ABS is easy to drill it looks like, and my particular size friction-fits in 2" PVC pipe...!

It seems like other pinhole enthusiasts are a fun loving bunch, way more experimental in general and interested in pursuing things just a little out of the ordinary. A lot of lensed photography is about precision, control. A lot of pinhole photography is about letting go, seeing what the heck happens.

Someone mentioned World Pinhole Photography Day and for a while back around the turn of the century they had a pretty active discussion board. One year a bunch of us had a pinhole print exchange and I received prints from I don't know how many people in how many countries - very cool to see what others were doing. It was all very collegial and exciting.

Pinhole photography is about experimenting with an idea, like altered film planes that distort the image like a fun house mirror or multiple lenses opening around a curved film plane. I still haven't lined the inside of a pinhole camera with film and hung a prism just behind the lens, but it's on my list.

Jim, well said.

{Thread hijack alert!}

jay moussy said:

@DWThomas, do tell about and show your tooling for the pinhole-making!

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Tooling? Hmm -- sounds more sophisticated than it is! I am assuming you are speaking of the actual pinhole "plate" as opposed to the whole camera.

That set of galleries I linked to in post #2 has sub-galleries for each of my creations which are not exactly tutorials, but give some idea of the construction of the cameras. Alas, sometime after I did the Bronica body cap I sold off a bunch of sheet metal working machinery I had (needed room in the garage for a snow blower!), so it is less likely anything quite like that will happen again, although it is possible to use drills, files, and a bench vise for a bending brake, to make small pieces.

The fabrication of pinholes is more a matter of patience (at least here) than tooling, but for the record:

Center is a piece of brass shim stock in process. I've done some in 0.001 inch stock, but it's flimsy and hard to handle, 0.002 inch seems a better choice. In general it is good to keep the plate very thin to help assure a knife edge on the hole. Literally drilling a thicker piece creates a tunnel-like hole that causes more off-axis light falloff or in the extreme, actual vignetting.

At the right is a pin vise with a needle in it, but one could substitute a cork for the pin vise. Lower right is two fine grits of wet-or-dry sandpaper; upper right is a container of water to wet the sandpaper. At left there is a pair of cheap +1.5 diopter reading glasses I can put over my regular glasses to help my 70+ year old eyes see this fine stuff better.

The tubular object at left is a handheld 50x microscope which has a built-in reticle to measure 0.001 inch increments. I wouldn't try to buy one if starting from scratch, but it lives here from days of dealing with printed circuit boards and various photo-etched gizmos in my working days. There are some techniques using a scanner that can be used to measure the hole diameter, or a powerful eye loupe and a steel scale in units of your choice can give a reasonable approximation (we are discussing pinholery here!)

I usually place the shim stock on a scrap of mat board which provides a smooth moderately hard surface but permits some deformation when pressing a starting dimple.

The needle is used to create a "dimple" in the stock -- it is not necessary, maybe even not desirable, to actually puncture the stock with the needle. The stock is turned over and gently sanded using a circular motion. One can expand the hole by reinserting the needle to gently upset the edges further, then sanding again. Turning the needle gently while in place can help round the hole.

A magnified cross-section view (crudely drawn!) of what is trying to happen:

The final result is a knife edged round hole (if one is lucky!) I then blacken the brass with a dubious liquid that is used to darken and "weather" brass model railroad engines. All in all, it's more of an exercise in patience than tooling.

Hope that helps,

I think the common thread to all of this is the freedom to think outside the box. (pun intended)

That is the "lets see what happens if it do this" approach. It appeals to our sense of adventure. There is a certain comfort and a optimism in every shot. Even when things do not go as planned, we may be disappointed, but the results often generate a "now that's interesting" after thought.

Also I do fall into the group of people who like the tinkering with my hands as well as my mind.

My love affair with 19th C photography has led me to using pinhole as a way to create elegant yet soft pictorial landscapes. I'm not interested in distortion or vignetting and try to minimize light fall-off at the corners. Most recently I've been shooting 6x9 and cropping enlarged compositions from those exposures.

DW your method and age are similar to mine. Since the last of my brass shim stock was .005" thick, I used a Pepsi cans and sanded the paint off. Sanding reduced the thickness to .0025" by the time I sanded the dimple down. The finest needles I could find locally were, .010" bead working needles. After sanding the hole is .013" +/- and looks good through a jewelry's loop. I have also managed to make some nice .017" pinholes and since I am working with a 4x5 view cameras I can adjust the f stops by varying the bellow length. I think your method is spot on, thanks for posting for the group.

Arthur your goals are similar to mine. So far I have had the best results with a f stop of 360. That is a .017 pinhole at 6.2 inches. My biggest issue is estimating the field of view. If you have not discovered it yet, look up the work of Flinders Petrie. The did a lot of early Egyptian archeology in the 1880's and built his own PH camera for the field work.

Thanks for leading me to Flinders Petrie. I love this stuff. My favorite Egypt antiquities photographer is "Felix Teynard" Calotypes of Egypt." Great book.

Felix Teynard made wonderful calotypes!!!

I also use a method similar to Dave's.. although my tools aren't as fancy just a thin sewing needle with a piece of electrical tape wrapped around the dull end to keep it from poking my thumb when using it. An old piece of scrap wood to work on, and some 600 grit emery paper. You can eyeball the diameter of the pinhole pretty well, or hold it next to a ruler w/ mm markings on it. Occasionally, if I really want to know what the diameter is, I stick it in my enlarger after first putting a transparent mm ruler in there so that I know how many mm on the baseboard = 1mm in the negative holder. I usually cut aluminum from a drink can, and the quality of the pinholes varies a lot depending on how hard the aluminum is and how much you thin it down with emery paper before making the hole... it's not that big a deal... any small pinhole will make a photo and it's fun to see what will happen! Have fun!

My experience over many years is similar to Dave Thomas' (post #8)). A handheld microscope with a measuring reticle is a great convenience in examining and measuring pinholes. Peakoptics.com sells a 25x model for $55. Scanning a pinhole and counting the pixels across its diameter also works well when using a minimum exposure to prevent blowing out the diameter.

.002" brass shim stock (available at many hardware stores) works cleaner than the aluminum cans I've tried. A fine whetstone is more convenient than sandpaper when using the dimple and sand method. For very small pinholes I use sewing pins held in a pin vice to make a slight dimple. Without removing the pin from the dimple, I sand down both pin and dimple. Removing the pin usually removes most or all of the burr. If the pinhole is too small, I insert a new pin and ground it down a little more. Eventually I'll have one pinhole the right size and several more for future use on other cameras.

Larger pinholes can be drilled. A #80 drill is about right for a 4" focal length. Drilling can leave burrs. To reduce this, use a sandwich of two somewhat thicker brass sheets clamped tightly on both sides of the pinhole material by thin sheets of plywood. Burrs can also be eliminated by making a tool by grinding the end of a small steel rod or old drill bit to a blunt point by rotating it against a grind wheel.

Because it is photography reduced to absolute minimum. Although one can pay $100 and far beyond for fancy pinhole cameras you can also tape up a cardboard box and use a sheet of darkroom loaded 8X10 photo paper stuck to one side. Then, even buying a pre made pinhole would only run another $10~$20.
True, if setting up to make pinhole photos for the first time then you could spend perhaps $200 on paper, trays, chemicals and a safelight bulb. But after that initial investment you can make big prints for cheap. You could produce 8X10's for as little as $2.50 each.

I lean toward the more expensive option - isn't this pretty?

MattKing said:

I lean toward the more expensive option - isn't this pretty?

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Yes it is! I have stayed pretty much DIY, but there is no question some of the commercially produced pinhole cameras are truly works of art.

MattKing said:

I lean toward the more expensive option - isn't this pretty?
View attachment 239763

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Yes it is. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that. I have some photographic tools that I keep simply because they are pretty and look nice on display.
My preference in pinhole is larger format, 4X5 or curved 5x7 using photo paper as a negative. That means home build for me because it’s just so hands on and......well....cheap. I kinda like paper because it is easy to get results fast and make necessary adjustments or changes same day if need be.

I lean toward the DIY option - just machined a body cap to fit it with a recessed pinhole for shorter focal length.

The other reason I went the "purchase" route is that the film transport issues are handled so well.
And with a 4x5 enlarger, I can even enlarge 6x12!

My first pinhole camera was a small box suited to a 4x5 film holder that my son and I fashioned out of foam core board, duct tape, a cut up piece of cardboard (for the shutter) and a small piece of household aluminum foil. I think he or I still have it. The pinhole itself was just exactly that, a hole poked in the aluminum foil with a pin. He and I made some fine photos with it but because it was kinda fragile, lightweight and had no tripod socket, it was of somewhat limited usefulness.

I think our only goals were to have fun together....and see if it would really work. We did have some fun and it did work pretty well.

After that, I happened upon 4x5, 75mm focal length, camera from Lensless Camera company. This was a dramatic improvement in usability but only a small improvement in photo quality. It is rigid, has tripod sockets, and a nifty shutter mechanism. I made many pleasing photos with it....but for some dumb reason, I traded it for a ZeroImage 2000. This last camera is fantastic and makes wonderful photos (when the operator does his job)...but, I really wish I had the 4x5 Lensless Camera Co. box back. I see they're still available at a reasonable price from the usual sources...maybe I should get one.

Here are a few of my pinhole photos...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradleykeith/albums/72157638802721656

I was never interested in pinhole until I had an idea and a pinhole camera was the only way to do it. I ended up using a Holga WPC. In hindsight I should have bought a different one, though the Holga worked most of the time. I am pretty much finished with the project so I probably won't use the pinhole much anymore. It worked out pretty good for the project though.

You can see some of the images on my website under Every Broken Wave http://www.patrickrobertjames.com

I have some in the gallery here as well. Not sure how much of an overlap there is between the two. I still need to sort them and be done with it...

Grandpa Ron said:

Do you have a pinhole camera objective?

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My main objective has been to obtain the best images possible from the most primitive pinhole camera I can use. For me, a primitive pinhole camera has one shot, one aperture, one focal length, no viewfinder, no mirror, no pentaprism, no rangefinder, no view screen, no focus, no lens, no shutter, no film counter, no film winder, no light meter, no batteries, no electronics, no gears, and no tripod (just set camera on stable surface).

Other objectives are to practice relaxing, practice careful planning, and practice slowly shooting one image at a time.

My first attempt at a pinhole camera was mounting a do-it-yourself pinhole on an Argus C3 35mm rangefinder body. It was the last time I used color film in a pinhole because I was very displeased with the images.

I then began experimenting with 4x5 and 8x10 large format black & white sheet film in do-it-yourself pinhole cameras. My pinhole cameras include 4x5 inch single-shot curved film plane sheet film cameras that I made from oatmeal cans and PVC pipes, 4x5 inch single-shot flat film plane sheet film cameras that I made from cardboard boxes, and an 8x10 inch single-shot flat film plane sheet film camera that I made from foam board. I have been very pleased with the images from these cameras; especially the images from curved film plane cameras.

Next, I experimented with 120 medium format black & white roll-film in cameras (Zero Image and Holga). I have been very pleased with the images.

I also tried mounting pinholes on digital camera bodies (Olympus and Nikon). I was very happy with the short amount of time it took to produce the digital pinhole images but I have not been satisfied with their quality.

Large Format pinhole cameras by Narsuitus, on Flickr

Medium Format pinhole cameras by Narsuitus, on Flickr

Digital pinhole camera by Narsuitus, on Flickr

Pinhole Image by Narsuitus, on Flickr

narsuitus said:

.....to practice relaxing.....

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YES!!!

Thank you for mentioning this. I had forgotten about this aspect of pinhole photography.

to relax and have fun...that is the goal.

when it seems like so many people are uptight and absurdly pedantic about every tiny aspect of photography...
pinhole rejects that and allows one to make beautiful work, while being relaxed and having fun.

Has anyone tried flash with a pinhole outfit, maybe in macro or just up close?. It's the depth of field that intrigues me.