photography

Art

Pinhole cameras

I have been a photography nut for a long time, and I knew it was just a matter of time before my crafty side collided with my photographer side.  Well this just so happened to take place just a few days ago when I found a website with instructions on how to make your own pinhole cameras.  I was so excited that I ended up making three of their pinhole camera designs; two for me and one for my little sister.  Unfortunately the first roll of film from their "Photos of Your Mother" camera was kind of a bust because I punched the shutter hole way too big.  They say to use a needle to poke a small hole, but I shoved the needle through, causing the hole to be gigantic... for a pinhole camera.  If the hole is too big the pictures will turn out blurry.  You really want to just barely poke through with the tip of the needle.  For shits and giggles, here are some of the photographs that came from that camera:

As you can see, the images are quite blurry and the spacing is way off, but with some tweaking I started getting those problems hammered out.  The next camera I tackled was the "World Pinhole Camera Day Camera." Lucky for you, I documented myself making this one!

And thats it!  I actually haven't finished the roll of film in this camera, but I did whip out a little matchbox pinhole camera and blew through that film really fast!  I actually like the design of that camera more because the guy adds a little "clicker" that helps out with the spacing of the pictures.  I don't have pictures of that camera, but I do have the pictures from it:

In these ones, the quality is better, but the vignette is pretty extreme because matchbox pinhole cameras have a pretty shallow body.

If you want to make your own pinhole cameras then you can visit Corbis Readymech Cameras for the quirky cameras or matchboxpinhole.com for a more simplistic camera.  So far the matchbox camera was my favorite, probably because it was smaller and easier to just throw in my purse and because of the clicker mechanism that helps with the spacing of the photographs.