Pinhole photography with D200

<p>I am interested in trying to mess around with pinhole photography.  I was wondering if anyone else has done this and could recommend a site to buy a pinhole body cap/lens.  Something in the area of 35mm lens equivalent is what I'd like to find.  Again, I know almost nothing about this, so if I am getting things wrong, please let me know.</p>

<p>just do it yourself.  it's not hard.</p>

It is very easy to make a pinhole cap. Materials: body cap, 1/8 inch or similar size drill bit and drill, black tape (gaffers or equivalent), and needle or pin. Find, and mark the center of your body cap. Drill a 1/8 or similar size hole there. Cover the hole with a piece of black tape. Take a small pin and pierce the tape. This will be your "pinhole". Give it a try on the D200. Play with shutter times until you get something you like.You can go back and experiment with different sizes of pinholes, by replacing the tape and piercing a new hole.

<p>Do a search and you will come up with a lot of areas with this information. Basically the correct size of the hole is determined by the distance to the film plane or censor.<br>

I'm at a different location or I could point you to an article.</p>

<p>The Learning section of Photo.net has a quite comprehensive discussion of pinhole cameras.  I've never tried it but it seems to me that the fun would be in the experimentation.<br>

Fortunately with digital the time delay between execution and final result is very short.  Just think of the time delay back in the mid 19th century between exposing a plate and actually seeing if anything useful was captured.<br>

Those guys (or gals) must have been very patient people.</p>

<p>I don't believe you can get the equivalent of a 35mm focal length when doing pinhole photography with an SLR.  The flange is 46.5mm from the sensor plane, so if you put your pinhole there that is the equivalent focal length.  I suppose you might be able to recess it slightly, but if you went very far you'd hit the mirror.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.pinholeresource.com/shop/home">http://www.pinholeresource.com/shop/home</a></p>

<p>You need to make the pin hole with a small drill or lazer cut it using brass shim plate.  The hole really needs to be very round and an accurate diameter.  You can not accomplish either of these with a pin as a pin has varying diameter and tears its way through the material.  I have drilled and sanded holes, examined them under 100x and they looked good, yet on 4x5 film, the pics were not as sharp as I wanted.</p>

<p>The smaller the format, the smaller the hole and more perfectly round needs to be.   Given a perfect hole, 35mm is too small for pinhole photography.</p>

<p>Buy some plates from above link and use them for best chance of sucess.</p>

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