35MM CAMERA LENS

Adventures with Pinhole and Home-Made Cameras

Photography is driven by technological innovation, but "Adventures with Pinhole and Home-made Cameras" strikes off in a radically different direction. Featuring the images of renowned artists and photographers, it describes a variety of imaginative approaches, using camera construction techniques which range in sophistication from precision engineering with state-of-the-art lenses to piercing a pinhole in a beer can! Visual aspects of the book are complemented by an extensive practical section, including guidelines on image formation and step-by-step procedures for exposure control, as well as diverse methods of building and adapting camera bodies. John Evans is a photographer and writer who has been making cameras and associated equipment since the 1960s.

This is my latest pinhole camera creation, which I have been working on for the past month or so. It has been a while, but I decided that it was probably about time that I should consider building a pinhole camera completely from scratch; as apposed to modifying an existing camera (which I have already done a few times).

The camera itself is not quite complete yet. I still need to paint the insides of the camera black, devise an actual "pinhole" for the camera, as well as drill out a notch for the film take-up spool.

The main materials used where basically cardboard (from an old shoebox), and Popsicle sticks for the inner framework of the body, film housing, shutter and the rear cover. I used plastic bottle caps for both the advance and rewind knobs. As well as an old wooden bird cage perch, which I used to make the take-up and rewind spools.

The main goal of this project was to build the best pinhole camera that I could; using items and materials around the house as much as I could. So far, I have spent approximately $0.00 on building this camera.

I have to admit that this was a pretty good "thinking project"; a lot of considerations where made in the design and construction of the camera. Such as figuring out a way to make the camera completely "light-tight" (which is very important), also calculating the optimum distance between the film and the pinhole, as well as the ideal diameter of the pinhole, film type/size, etc. Not to mention trying to be as resourceful as I could in making all the individual parts; using materials around the house. The only real thing that I have to figure out now would be the number of turns of the "advance wheel" needed to advance the film roughly one frame. From what I can gather, about one to one and a half turns seems to do the trick. I guess I will not know for sure until I actually run a roll of film through it.

I am eagerly waiting for spring/summer, I hope to get out and take a lot of neat pictures this year with this camera (once it is finished of course).

When I was a kid, perhaps around 11 years old, I made a pinhole camera from scratch. I believe it was for part of my photography merit badge in Boy Scouts.

Here's the photo I took with that pinhole camera to earn my badge. This scan is from a contact print I made myself from the negative. The exposure time for this shot was 30 seconds. This is the scene from the porch of the house I grew up in. The same day, I shot a 35 mm photo of the same scene with my little Petri camera.

I plan to put together a set of all the images related to the pinhole camera project. The final set will include a sequence of 35mm photos showing the construction, the 35mm shot of the same scene from the porch, and a scan directly from the original negative.