DIY

Building my Pinhole Camera

For my Photography Concepts class we all had to build a pinhole camera. After a failed mod of my broken beloved Fuji E900, I came up with the following design.

I faced a specific problem: most pinhole cameras have only one shot. You can expose the film or paper and go back and develop it, but when there is more than one opportunity for a great photograph, the only option would be to carry more than one camera. To avoid carrying a bag full of cameras, I came up with a solution. Over the course of six months, I designed and built a pinhole camera that uses regular 35 mm cartridges. I also wanted the advantage of being able to use large film for a larger image, so I combined three rolls of film, equally spaced, to give me a split image. With careful composition and positioning of the camera, the resulting split photograph can put together by the human brain. This gave me more freedom when choosing locations and subject matter. No longer was I limited to the short distances from the photo lab; I can take this camera hiking and get four to six exposures per set of three rolls of film giving me large format quality. Also I am able to switch out the film in the field, limited only by the number of canisters on hand and the available light.

 

Below are the build photos.