another DIY pinhole

[jbielikowski]

yesterday I've hacked old Mamiya back with some balsa wood and loads of gaffer tape. Everything is fine exept hole is bit too big, about 0.8mm. Here it is what it produce. Damn I'm preety happy with the results.

 

[Elektrojänis]

yesterday I've hacked old Mamiya back with some balsa wood and loads of gaffer tape. Everything is fine exept hole is bit too big, about 0.8mm. Here it is what it produce. Damn I'm preety happy with the results.

Cool! What's the negative size on these? 6x4,5? And how far did you have the film plane from the pinhole? (I'm not sure if focal length is really correct word with pinholes.)

Have you tried pinhole designer to calculate optimum hole size?

 

[jbielikowski]

Thanks, it's blurry as hell but with colour negative I think it should work better.

focal length was about 55mm, negative is 6x7.

I've used it for calculating exposure. It was too late for hole size, and I wasnt able to make smaller (should be around 0.3mm).

 

[charjohncarter]

Keep working on it, I have a body cap pinhole for my Pentax 6x7; it works great:

 

[Elektrojänis]

focal length was about 55mm, negative is 6x7.

I've used it for calculating exposure. It was too late for hole size, and I wasnt able to make smaller (should be around 0.3mm).

Making a larger hole smaller is a bit difficult... However it is quite easy to make new holes if you can change the hole to your camera. With a smaller hole you could get quite a bit more detail to the pics.

But anyway... It's quite a feeling to realize that you have taken a photo with only a small hole in place of a lens!

I have only experimented with regular 35mm film now... I used Nikon F2 with a body plug with a larger hole in it that was covered with a piece of aluminium from a soda can that had the pinhole in it (about 0.3mm). Focal length was about 46mm (or maybe it was 48mm... I forgot).

This was taken with that setup:

I'm going to experiment more with pinholes but I think now I'm staying with 35mm film because it's easy to get developed anywhere and the scanner I'm using doesn't take any larger formats. I've got to use something else than an SLR though... I want to do wider stuff and the mirror box get's in the way...

 

[charjohncarter]

This company http://www.lenoxlaser.com/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=17

makes good pinholes, they are 18 dollars but really worth it. Janis, that is a really good 35mm pinhole. I think I'd make another complete one, and not tear this one down.

 

[jbielikowski]

guys, your photos are far much better than mine, now I found smaller pin and made new "lens". I dont want to buy laser made holes, cause they are not DIY 😉 but one day I'll buy nice wooden pinhole camera. now I have problem how to attach tripod mount film back with gaffer tape.

 

[JoeV]

One other option you may want to consider when deciding to make your own replacement pinhole is a triangular pinhole, made from aligning together three very thin razor blades, or several pieces of overlapping thin metal foil. There's a long thread on F295 about this, here.

The advantages of a triangular pinhole seems to be (i) that you move one of the blades to adjust the pinhole size, and you can get down to fractions of mm easily, with very thin side-walls (when using a very thin shaving blade); (ii) if the blades are new, the hole is virtually ideally smooth on the side walls, not rough or burr-filled like often happens when hand-drilling into soft metal; (iii) sun flare, instead of being an irregular wash of light across the image, becomes a 6-pointed star shape; (iii) with the proper mechanism you can make a variable-size hole, by adjusting the position of one of the blades.

~Joe

 

[charjohncarter]

guys, your photos are far much better than mine, now I found smaller pin and made new "lens". I dont want to buy laser made holes, cause they are not DIY 😉 but one day I'll buy nice wooden pinhole camera. now I have problem how to attach tripod mount film back with gaffer tape.

You can see a little bit of my tripod mount that I attached to my Polaroid Color Pack II that I converted to pinhole in this photo.

I got a 3/4 in. (18.75 mm) square on the end piece of plastic that was about 2 inches long (50 mm). The I drilled a hole and put a nut in the hole and glue it in with epoxy.

 

[Elektrojänis]

Janis, that is a really good 35mm pinhole. I think I'd make another complete one, and not tear this one down.

No I'm not going to trash it. Body caps and soda can aluminium are cheap enough to just make another.

Actually I have bought an M39 body cap for making a pinhole for my FED-2. Only problem is that it is made of quite thick metal so I need to use some power tools to make a hole in it. I'm also thinking of making some kind of 35mm pinhole camera from scratch (nothing fancy, just some kind of taped together contraption).

guys, your photos are far much better than mine, now I found smaller pin and made new "lens". I dont want to buy laser made holes, cause they are not DIY but one day I'll buy nice wooden pinhole camera.

Luckily the joy of DIY does not depend on who makes best images (How can we even define what's best?), and you can improve your setup for sure.

Hmmm... I might explain a bit how I made the pinhole I used to take that pic... This comes from memory as I didn't document it any way. Maybe it'll help someone (and if not, I get a good exercise in writing in english).

First, I prepared the needle. Most needles thicken quite fast to their full thickness from the sharp end. I wanted it to be more like a long cone so I could control the size of the hole better. I attached the needle to a dremel-tool and took some fine sand paper and thinned it a bit with those. Then I used a micrometer to determine how deep in to the aluminium i need to get the needle to get to make the size of a hole I wanted (and marked that to teh needle.

After that I cut a piece of aluminium from a soda can and thinned it a bit with fine sand paper. I didn't get it much thinner though so it might not have mattered to the end result (if you thin it too much, it breaks/bends/streches too easily). Then I started to carefully drill the hole with the needle by spinning it carefully against the aluminium rolling the needle between my fingers (I thought the dremel might just be too fast). I kept the aluminium on a rigid surface so it would stay flat and wouldn't strech to a "bump" around the hole.

After I got through but the hole was still smaller than I intended, I used sandpaper again to flatten the edges (from both sides of the aluminium piece) of the hole before continuing the drilling. Slowly I drilled the hole bigger and polished it and drilled an so on until it was the size I wanted (the needle went deep enough). I might have also drilled alternately from both sides, but I'm not sure about that (it was over a year ago I think).

Some people have also used a scanner to measure and inspect the pinholes they have made, but I haven't tried that (yet).

 

[jbielikowski]

thank you all for advices, they will help much with building next pinhole camera.
Elektrojänis, your method looks good, lack of dremel wont be big problem thou.
charjohncarter, you reminded me about epoxy, I have motorized version of film back, inner parts are already removed to reduce weight, but it will be enough place to make hole and fit a nut.
Joe, never heard of triangular holes, I'll try it one day for sure.

Now, last photo, I think the blur fits perfectly with the subject.

 

[Elektrojänis]

Elektrojänis, your method looks good, lack of dremel wont be big problem thou.

My method might have been a bit complex, but it worked for me. 🙂

Lack of dremel tool shouldn't be a big problem... I only used it for thinning the needle. Dremel (or similar small drill) is handy in lot of DIY-projects though.

Hmmm... Is that a bottle quite close up in the last photo?

 

[rtphotos]

Hi jbielikowski,

Nothing wrong with your images! Nice subject matter, too. But if you are seeking sharper images, you may be interested in my pinhole making technique.

I use the "dimple and sand" method to hand-make my pinholes. 0.15 - 0.5mm should be no problem. (and 0.4mm will be optimum for your 55mm focal length).

After barely piercing a hole through your aluminum with your smallest needle, turn the piece over and sand the "bump-side" with very fine sandpaper. Go slow and use a scanner to measure the hole.

Sanding down the bump also ensures that the pinhole is round and free of burrs. This equates to sharper images. I also like using brass shims, 0.02" thickness from my hobby shop. [edit: doh! that's a typo - should be 0.002" thickness].

An expanded explanation is on my Flickr site. Click on the pinhole below:



Best of luck!

rt 😎

 

[JohnTF]

Working with ortho film is fun, if you can find some military surplus, so much the better, I found a can of aerial stuff, you can develop in paper developer using ordinary safelights as you develop by inspection.

I also found a can of 35mm ortho, so we made some cameras out of 35mm film cans, the image on almost any circular pinhole camera extends from a few mm from the pinhole completely around and you can carefully position the film with tape using a safelight.

As to the pinholes, after making them for years, I found that .002 inch brass shim stock was just the right mix of hardness, thickness and workability.

A small hole can be slowly drilled with a sewing needle, some sanding, and a final "polishing" with the needle to make the hole as smooth as possible.

A good magnifying lens or microscope will allow you to see how good a job you did. Smaller in general is better. You will quickly be able to tell the good ones from the poor ones.

You can make as good a quality of pinhole with the shim stock as any commercial product.

Aluminum cans are possible, but the aluminum is rather hard to drill. You may be able to buy the shim stock at a real hardware store, and it is perfect.

30 seconds was the average exposure.

I did shoot with a IIIc fitted with a pinhole fitted to a body cap, and while the results were interesting, the larger formats were more interesting, IMO.

Regards, John

 

[JohnTF]

Hi jbielikowski,

Nothing wrong with your images! Nice subject matter, too. But if you are seeking sharper images, you may be interested in my pinhole making technique.

I use the "dimple and sand" method to hand-make my pinholes. 0.15 - 0.5mm should be no problem. (and 0.4mm will be optimum for your 55mm focal length).

After barely piercing a hole through your aluminum with your smallest needle, turn the piece over and sand the "bump-side" with very fine sandpaper. Go slow and use a scanner to measure the hole.

Sanding down the bump also ensures that the pinhole is round and free of burrs. This equates to sharper images. I also like using brass shims, 0.02" thickness from my hobby shop.

An expanded explanation is on my Flickr site. Click on the pinhole below:



Best of luck!

rt 😎

Are you missing a zero on your shim stock size, or am I adding one to mine? ;-)

I thought I was using .002".

Regards, John

 

[fidget]

Hi, great thread! Has given me enthusiasm to get out my pinholes.

I used the pin and sand method in the aluminium of a drinks can. I cut strips and made a few holes in each, picking the best and roundest from each strip. I then blacked the hole by holding it in the smoke/flame of a wax candle. It seemed to work well on 6x6 shots.

Lensless Isolette 1.

 

[JohnTF]

I recall reading about some old box cameras that used a pinhole with a lens, as in it is the way the camera was made, not modified.

I never got any real answers to people about using a pinhole with a modern lens, the light rays in the very center should not be bent, though if you put a pinhole in front of a lens, it will refract the light very quickly so you will not be using only the center of the lens.

I think I will leave it at that point, to avoid making too many statements which may be in serious error, and hope someone has done some real work combining the two will add some facts to the mix.

But adding a pinhole to the back of a simple lens--- ?

fidget--, decent images, though I found the aluminum can material difficult to work with, and stopped using it once I found a supply of .002 brass shim stock to last me a lifetime.

I used to do a project with students, and they came up with some creative ways to make some very good, and bad, pinholes. We had microscopes, so they got a good look at their work before they mounted them.



Regards, John

 

[rtphotos]

Are you missing a zero on your shim stock size, or am I adding one to mine? ;-)

I thought I was using .002".

Regards, John

Thanks, John for catching that! Mine is a typo. I really do use .002" shims.

Great image, by the way, John. It has a nice vintage look. And Fidget, those are really nice medium-format exposures. I do esp. like the first one with the single old gnarly tree and interesting stones (gravestones?),

rt 😎

 

[JohnTF]

Thanks, John for catching that! Mine is a typo. I really do use .002" shims.

Great image, by the way, John. It has a nice vintage look. And Fidget, those are really nice medium-format exposures. I do esp. like the first one with the single old gnarly tree and interesting stones (gravestones?),

rt 😎

I was thinking those shots would have a lot to them if shot with a lens outfit.

Nice shots.

Edit, I did not make this very clear, what I was trying to say was the shots would have a lot to them regardless of the technique which you chose.

Regards, John

 

[lorenzo1910]

Today I will start my "pinhole adventure"...
This camera has been made in few hours this morning...
I will shot paper negative (10x15 Cm)

Crossed fingers...