Need advice for pinhole camera design

avalladares7439 · Jan 6, 2016

So I want to make a camera like this one it'll be 5ft by 5ft cube (maybe bigger). The fabric will be light proof and the frame will be made out of pvc. My question is what should I use to capture the light. 35mm is obviously to small and I don't think medium format would cut it either. Should I use a paper negative? If so what paper and what size do you guys recommend. Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated

Daire Quinlan · Jan 6, 2016

I assume the guy in the picture is making it this big because he wants to put a correspondingly enormous piece of something into the camera, I assume along the curved rails on the bottom, either paper or some huge piece of film or maybe hand coated substrate of some description. If you're going to make a pinhole camera that takes MF or something like an 8x10 sheet of paper you can make the camera considerably smaller ...

AgX · Jan 6, 2016

Why would you want to build a camera 5x5' when you got no idea what format of sensitive material you want to use? That makes no sense to me at all.

DWThomas · Jan 6, 2016

Hmmm -- too ambitious (not to mention $$$$) for me! Some paper is available in rolls of considerable width (40 to 56 inches wide -- but bring money!). You could anchor a sheet of cardboard/thin plywood/Masonite or the like and fasten a mosaic of cut sheets of print paper to it I suppose. One advantage of using paper that way, vs film, would be it could be handled under a safelight instead of total darkness. So far I have stopped at 8x10 inches, although I can see 11x14 or 16x20 could be "relatively manageable."

Sirius Glass · Jan 6, 2016

You need to think this completely through before you continue.

dasBlute · Jan 6, 2016

Go for it and have fun! Try pre-flashed RC paper negatives [google joe van cleave] ,
you could probably even use some "liquid light" painted on something, fabric or whatever.

summicron1 · Jan 6, 2016

you could buy liquid emulsion and make your own. Or you could mount multiple pieces of paper and make a jigsaw-puzzle type negative.

Or you could mount a 35 mm camera inside the thing pointing backwards at the inner wall and photograph the image the pinhole projects.

John Koehrer · Jan 6, 2016

Well, papers less expensive & slower. Larger paper still isn't cheap but it's all relative.
Stay in the camera as you make a test shot & process it in the camera. Use Rubylith for a window/safe light.

avalladares7439 · Jan 6, 2016

Thanks a lot for all the advice and tips everyone I'm asking this because I want to try this project and see what happens. Once thanks again for all of the advice I really appreciate it.

Jim Jones · Jan 6, 2016

Large cameras, whether pinhole or lens, aren't easy to operate: http://robroy.dyndns.info/lawrence/mammoth.html

NedL · Jan 7, 2016

The great picture

AgX · Jan 7, 2016

Jim Jones said:
Large cameras, whether pinhole or lens, aren't easy to operate: http://robroy.dyndns.info/lawrence/mammoth.html

But the one proposed here would not weigh much more than a beach windscreen and handle alike.

NedL · Jan 7, 2016

That's a good point and a real advantage for cameras made of cardboard or matboard or foamcore. I've hiked miles with 3 8x10 cameras in a black garbage bag, no trouble at all. A single 8x10 wooden camera would have been much more of a burden. Of course the plus becomes a minus when the wind picks up!

paul ron · Jan 8, 2016

you can also use it as a duck blind on off days?

id mount some drawing paper inside n trace the images for the start of a painting.

cuongtd · Jan 8, 2016

You could find some design in instruction.com

Joe VanCleave · Jan 10, 2016

I made a 24" x 30" format pinhole camera and used a 3 x 3 grid of 8" x 10" paper negatives. It was easy to process each section of the negative, given their relatively small size, and also made for convenient scanning and assembling a digital collage in Photoshop, while also being contact printed.

My camera was built on a frame of 3/4" hardwood sticks, covered in masonite board, with a side panel that opened to gain access to the film board, which was a thin sheet of plywood. A sheet of black corrugated plastic would also have worked, and would have been lighter in weight.

~Joe

Need advice for pinhole camera design

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