Old bulk 35mm tin - can I make it into a pinhole camera?

[IloveTLRs]

I've got two empty Kodak 35mm bulk roll tins sitting around. Is it possible to turn them into pinhole cameras? I have 0 ("zero") experience with this :confused:

 

[Larry Bullis]

You can make a pinhole camera out of anything at all. I don't think anyone has made one yet out of a live animal. I'm not suggesting that.

 

[winger]

Didn't some guy use his mouth to hold film and do pinholes from inside his mouth? But, thankfully, I don't think anyone has used a non-human animal to do pinhole.
As for the OP's question, I don't see why not. You just have to decide what side you want to put the pinhole on and whether you want a curved film plane or not.

 

[JBrunner]

If you can make it light tight and poke a teeny hole in it, yes.

 

[Jim Jones]

You can make one in a film can with the pinhole in the side as in the classic oatmeal container for very skinny panoramic photos, or in the middle of the lid for much distortion.

 

[Larry Bullis]

Didn't some guy use his mouth to hold film and do pinholes from inside his mouth?

There was one fellow back in the 1980's who actually used a hole between his teeth or holding his lips open just right was able to make photographs with NOTHING but film. Here's another guy; pretty impressive stuff, in my mind:

www.pinholephotography.org

But, thankfully, I don't think anyone has used a non-human animal to do pinhole.

Yes, I certainly agree with that; the point being though, just about everything has been made into pinhole cameras. For a while, it got downright tiresome. As if the point was to make something into a camera that hadn't been used before. There was a lot of stuff and lots of it was ingenious, but I soon got pretty tired of it. Check out early Pinhole Journals; full of it.

Did you hear about the cat in Seattle, Cooper, whose pet humans attached a digital camera on his collar, on a timer? He's done some great stuff. There's a flickr site which alludes me at the moment, but here's his blog:

http://cooper-catphotographer.blogspot.com/

And you, too, can put your cat in the running for a Purrlitzer Prize. Cameras are available from:

http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/pe_cc_o1_en.htm

It would be a hoot and a half to mod one of these cameras to make it into a pinhole.

I've been thinking of getting one for Scooter.

 

[Phillip P. Dimor]

Kodak has a good publication that is available online. Be sure to google it as opposed to finding it through their site. Finding anything on kodak.com is like a minor miracle.

 

[Larry Bullis]

I would recommend Eric Renner's wonderful book, now in the 4th edition:

Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering a[sic] historic technique

It has everything you'd need.

By the way, I really appreciate people who build their own cameras out of found materials, rather than buying them. There's nothing wrong with that, either but for me, designing and building the camera is an essential part of the process.

 

[Adrian D]

It works a treat!

I made a pinhole camera in exactly this way some years ago, using one of Ilford's 17m plastic bulk containers (haven't seen that size for while, is it just 30m thats available now?) and it worked perfectly.

What I liked about it was that the image formed over the whole width of the 35mm strip I'd taped into it, and included the perforations as well. It was good fun. I ended up with roughly 6 inch long contact prints from each exposure, with a very panoramic distorted feel.

Load up and enjoy!!

Adrian

 

[glbeas]

We used to play with the Kodak tins in that same fashion at the newspaper I worked at. We used circles cut from print paper for negs and rolled up little cylinders of cardboard and taped it to the the side to make legs so the tin stood up like an alarm clock.

 

[Larry Bullis]

You could make a miniature Eric Renner multi hole Pano camera. To do this you would need a cylinder that would be glued inside, and the film/paper would go around this, the emulsion facing the round wall of the can. Pinholes would be made to fit in the round wall. To do this right, see Renner. He tells all. You would need to space the holes just right to get the overlap to be continuous and not destructive to the image. Hey, he has one of these prints in MOMA, so somebody likes it.

 

[pgomena]

Any kind of tin with a light-tight lid will work just fine. I've used several sizes and shapes of cookie tins. It's great fun to make and use pinhole cameras from any type of box or container. Eric Renner's book is excellent and a fascinating read.

Peter Gomena