Pinhole Camera

So, I made my first camera:

It’s an old paracetomol box. The “lens” is the bottom of a film cannister with a hole poked through with the pin from my Just Shoot “I Love My Lomo” badge.

I cut open the box so I could lay it flat, and coloured the inside black. The, I cut a hole in the front, and mounted the “lens” over the hole. I then reassembled the box ready to load the film.

To load it, I took a “sacrificial” roll of film, pulled it all the way out, and then cut it off a couple of centimetres from the end, so I had a tab sticking out. This was to be the takeup spool. I then took my fresh film cannister, and pulled the film out far enough that it could be threaded through the paracetomol box. Once it was threaded through, I sellotaped the end of it to the tab sticking out of the takeup spool, and then tightened the takeup spool so both cannisters were held firmly against the box. I forgot to take pictures of this, so this diagram will have to do:

Then I simply covered the box with as much light-seal tape as I could (with a strip serving as a “shutter”, too). Taking a picture, then, was a simple matter of opening the shutter for a second or two, then sealing it up again. A couple of twists on the takeup spool and it was ready for the next shot.

I’ll confess at this point that I really, really didn’t expect this to work, let alone get any recognisable pictures out of it. I was therefore utterly delighted, when I developed the film, to not only find that it had been exposed in a recognisable fashion, but there were actual pictures on it.

All told, I think the experiment worked well, considering the thing was made in half an hour out of cardboard and sticky tape. Next time, I’ll try and use a smaller pinhole, and have a proper exposure window so my pictures don’t overlap quite so much.

The rest of the photos can be found in my gallery.

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