Pinhole Idea

[pinhole_dreamer]

Normally, pinhole cameras are lensless...except for the Holgas that have a bit of plastic over them. Husband and I were out at Wal-Fart picking up son's sunglasses and ordering a pair for hubby. While there, I found, conveniently placed right by the cash register, the wallet magnifiers. I bought two packs of them (so I have four total) and there's the regular one - big triangle looking thing - and a 4x one which is a smaller circle.

I like to play with scissors. (And tin snips...)

I've got one pinhole drying...but will need a couple more sprays with paint on the inside (using a Rocca cardboard/aluminum tin) and one finished (a gum container - rectangle - had mint 'cubes' of gum in it).

So...How would one go about fixing the magnifier on the pinhole? (I have a lot of heavy black card stock and a joyous amount of black electricians tape!)

The one way I can think of immediately is to just cut a little bit out and put it directly over the pinhole. Or.....to make a small cylinder out of the cardstock and then glue the bit of magnifier to the top of the cylinder and then glue the bottom of the cylinder to the 'camera'. Voila. Pinhole with a lens!

I'm also thinking about taking off the stupid spring that holds the shutter in place on my Helioflex and just using the lenscap as the shutter. Then while I have it open, I'll put a pinhole in there.

I'll try out the gum camera here in a little bit because it's really not that big - but I used a pop can/needle pimple/super fine sandpaper for the pinhole - and a LOT of electrical tape.

 

[Tom Miller]

Since pinholes have infinite depth of field, the lens will be in focus as well as everything else, unless the lens is pretty much immediately in front of the pinhole. Any dust or scratches on the lens will be recorded by the camera. I've used this principle to conduct short (20 minute) pinhole-on-a-stick demonstrations to elementary school kids. We make a pinhole and mount it on a piece of mat board. I have a set of bug-eye viewing cones which have a lens about 1 1/4 inches from the narrow part of the cone. I ask the kids to look through the cone with just their eyes. They see the world multiplied by the facets of the bug-eye lens. Then I have them look through the pinhole (mounted to a piece of mat board) and through the bug-eye cone at the same time. Then they can read the word. This proves two scientific principles at once: 1) human eyes have lens in them which are unable to focus close enough to read the scratched word on the lens; and 2) the pinhole is an image-forming device with infinite depth of field which takes the light coming through the lens and creates a new image and projects it back to the human eye. Kids are fascinated by this. And your idea to mount the lens on a cardstock cylinder will be a fun experiment. Try different focal lengths.

 

[pinhole_dreamer]

So the question would be, then, how to make a changeable mount for the different card stock lenses. I'll do some research on that...and a bit of experimenting.

By the way, Tom, I'd have love to have been at one of your demonstrations when I was a kid.