I finally finished the first test roll in my new (as in, bought new, direct from the builder) CCB 6x6 pinhole camera. CCB stands for Custom Camera Builders; they're Canadian eBay sellers, and the camera is much more reasonably priced than many of the "extra fancy" prebuilt pinhole designs. It's a "base model" camera, though -- no provision for a cable release; just a manual shutter with enough friction to stay either open or closed, wherever you left it. There's no spool control at all in the supply chamber, and the takeup has only the (adjustable) advance knob with a brass drive key to stick into the spool. One result is that the frames are slightly skewed, at least on my first roll (I may make up a pair of shims to put both spools at the same height). The camera uses a 0.2mm laser drilled hole at 30mm from the film, which is pretty danged wide and gives f/150, and has just a plain hole drilled in the back cover to view the 6x6 framing track. The interior is either flat black (inside the main chamber between pinhole and film and inside the film chambers) or covered with a foam-backed velvety material (black, of course), which both acts as a pressure plate to keep the film flat, and is one of the best possible reasonably priced materials for light absorption.
The back is held on by a pair of terminal posts, brass knurled nuts hand tightened onto embedded screw studs.
Overall, it's the kind of basic thing someone with pretty decent wood shop skills might make to sell inexpensively, in hopes of making their photo hobby pay for itself (which I suspect is a very good description of Custom Camera Builders).
Sadly, the roll of .EDU Ultra 100 I loaded for my test had two problems: first, it was Fomapan, probably the worst film choice I could make for pinhole photography in terms of reciprocity departure (an exposure that metered at fifteen minutes turned out, after reciprocity correction, to need to stand literally overnight); and second, it had been removed from its foil packet to better fit in one of those black plastic 120 film cans -- in 2006. There's just recently been a discussion about how this isn't a great idea, because it exposes the film and backing paper to humidity (even in the closed film can). As a result, every frame has black blotches (in the positive) where moisture and contact with the backing locally desensitized the film, including an interesting circular feature on the last frame, where the hole Foma punches at the film tail crease (thereby leaving a raw edge in contact with the emulsion) did this more than even the rest of the roll.
Still, I found out what I wanted/needed to know about the camera. Did I mention it's WIDE? I'm seriously not used to 30mm on 6x6 (and it's been a long time since I made pinhole images with my homemade cameras like Gumpintoids, Pintoids, and such).
Still, lots of fun. More than worth what I paid (about $70 including shipping from Canada). With good film and shims to keep the film path straight across I expect the only artifacts to be the sort of brushed edge, where the velvet material projects its shadow to define the frame. And I'll get used to the (roughly 17 mm equivalent for 35mm) wide angle. It's flat film, so at least fences and walls won't come out curved.
CCB 6x6 Pinhole, .EDU Ultra 100, Xtol-R Stock
CCB 6x6 Pinhole, .EDU Ultra 100, Xtol-R Stock