I wrote these up for some 35 mm pinhole cameras I gave
away recently, some for world pinhole day -- if you
can use them, feel free.
-- pw
Pinhole Camera Instructions
You hold in your hand a pinhole camera, lovingly
hand-crafted from a cheap give-away camera. I
carefully removed the lens and shutter, and replaced
the lens with a piece of aluminum pop-can with a tiny
hole in it. Now you can take pictures with it.
General instructions:
* Load the camera with 35mm film (color print film,
ASA 100-200, will probably work best)
* Find something to take a picture of
* Set camera down on a firm surface, or hold it
against something
* Open front flap (or remove lens cap) (this is your
shutter)
* Select an exposure:
ConditionsExposure
Sunny2-4 seconds
Partly cloudy4-10 seconds
Shady 10-20 seconds
Cloudy 10-20 seconds
Night 15 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours
Inside, sunlit 1-4 minutes
Inside, light bulbs 2-10 minutes
Inside, dim 15 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours
* Count out loud one one thousand, two one thousand,
three one thousand... to count seconds to time the
exposure (use a watch to time longer exposures)
* Try not to move the camera during exposure (unless
you want to)
* Close front flap/replace lens cap (e.g. Close
shutter)
* Press button on top of camera
* Wind film until it stops
You've Taken a Pinhole Picture!
If you're not sure of the right exposure time, try
taking two more pictures of the same thing: one for ½
as long, and one for 2-4 times as long (this is called
bracketing your exposure). Only changes of at least
this much (1/2 or double) are likely to make much of a
difference in how your picture turns out (that is, a
30 second and a 35 second exposure will both look
about the same on film).
So, reasonable exposures might be (s=seconds,
m=minutes, h=hours)
1 s, 2 s, 4 s, 8 s, 16 s, 32 s, 1 m, 2 m, 4 m, 8 m, 16
m, 32 m, 1 h, 2 h, 4 h, 8 h, 16 h, 32 h
However, film doesn't absorb light as fast during a
long exposure (longer than a minute, typically,
although it varies from film to film). This is called
reciprocity failure and happens because films are
designed to work best when exposed to light for
between 1/1000 of a second and a couple of seconds.
Really short exposures, and really long exposures,
wind up requiring more light that exposure times in
the films' sweet spot.
If in doubt, give an exposure more time than you
think, rather than less.
Theory and comments:
What is a pinhole camera? The simplest camera, a hole
in a box.
How does it work? Light travels in straight lines
(ok, gravity can bend light, but that's not going to
influence your pictures). With a small enough hole,
light from one spot in the outside world travels (in a
straight line) to one and only one spot inside a
pinhole camera the pinhole stops all the other rays
Why bother? Pinhole cameras are a little bit of magic
you can hold in your hand, the simplest way possible
to get a picture. No lens, no battery, no
electronics, just a box, film, and you.
Pinhole pictures show the world in a unique, luminous
way, that lens cameras simply cannot match.
They let you take a picture of time passing seconds
or minutes rather than the fraction of a second, the
frozen moment, normal cameras show. Lights move,
people and cars disappear, trees wave, all captured,
slowly, on film.
Pinhole cameras have another curious property: whereas
lens cameras have to be focused to form a sharp image,
a pinhole camera shows everything, at any distance,
equally sharp (or equally fuzzy). So you can put a
pinhole camera next to your foot, and get a picture of
your foot and the statue of liberty at the same time.
You can't really say they're both in focus because
pinhole cameras don't focus!
If I use a smaller pinhole, will my pictures be
sharper? Yes, to a point. Larger pinholes let more
light in, which means shorter exposures, but fuzzier
pictures (more light hits the film from more parts of
the outside world, blurring the image). Smaller
pinholes let less light through, forming a sharper
image until the pinhole gets too small. Then the
wavelengths of light start to bunch up at the edges of
the pinhole and interfere with each other, causing
diffraction, and blurring the image.
One great thing about pinhole cameras is that, because
they are so simple to make, you can make a lot of
different kinds of cameras easily. Want a camera that
takes really BIG pictures? Find a fridge box and a
roll of photo paper (that'll work to make a negative,
but you'll need a darkroom to develop it). Want a
camera that takes a panorama, or looks in several
directions at once, or has several pinholes? Easy
with some cardboard and some black masking tape (most
art supply stores have this) you can build these. You
can make a camera that takes round pictures, or takes
pictures on curved film, or whatever.
Common problems:
* Pictures too dark: leave shutter open longer
