how to build a lf pinhole camera

[matt_m__toronto_]

has anyone here built one or know of where to get instructions on how

to build one?

 

thanks.

 

matt

[john_bolgiano]

I've built a few from both foamboard and wood.

<p>You can find plans and instructions at the <a href="http://www.pinholevisions.org/resources/index.php?pid=listing&category=camera+plans">Pinhole Visions</a> site.

[matt_m__toronto_]

thank you very much for that link.

[stephen hazelton]

There are a couple of books on the subject. Check your library or book store.

 

The basic idea is simple- make a light-tight box with film (or photo paper) at one side, a pinhole at the other, with a flap to cover the pinhole. It gets more complicated if you want to use roll film or film holders (as opposed to changing film in the darkroom).

 

You can also buy or make pinhole adaptors using a body cap on an SLR camera. You can buy a Holga camera modified for pinhole- www.holgamods.com. I'm sure you could modify a lot of old cameras to use as pinhole camera.

[matt_m__toronto_]

one of the links talks about building a 4x5 pinhole camera. it says meter for f 64 then multiply the time by 20. now what about lens size? i couldn't find anywhere what mm it was. is there a formula here?

[matt_m__toronto_]

scratch that. i found that these instrucions are for a 120mm lens on 4x5. what would the formula be for widening the focal length?

[jim_stewart]

Here is another link for building a 4x5 pinhole camera.

http://www.popularwoodworking.com/features/fea.asp?id=1048

You will start to see some vignetting with focal distances shorter than 90-100 mm. The formula I use for determining the size of the pinhole is d=0.0015xSQRT(F) where d is the pinhole diameter in inches and F is the focal distance in mm. Your aperture is F/25.4/d. To get your exposure take a meter reading at f/16 and multiply it by the square of (16/aperture). For example, if your focal distance is 100mm the pinhole diameter will be .015 inches and the aperture is f/262. (262/16)^2 is 270 so you need 270 times as much light as you need at f/16. If your meter reading was f/16 at 1/100 second the pinhole exposure will be 2.7 seconds. This is more than 1 second so you will have to correct for reciprocity in accordance with the manufacturers information.

[jon_grepstad1]

You may get some ideas here:

http://home.online.no/~gjon

 

Jon Grepstad

[chad_jarvis1]

A large (5 gallon) drywall compound bucket will accomodate an 11x14 or 7x17 sheet of film. Paint the outside with some opaque acrylic house paint, mount your pinhole lens (I guess those buckets would give you about a 12in focal length), glue some guides inside, and you're in business. Just a large version of the old Quaker Oats camera.

[davidv1]

Matt,

 

Since you already own a Crown Graphic, the fastest way would be to buy a blank lensboard and add a pinhole to it. I epoxied an OpTech flip-up lenscap to one to use as a shutter. The pinhole gets taped onto the back of the board. New lens boards are about $30 from MidWest Photo (mpex.com); maybe cheaper from an auction.

 

Using the Crown gives you variable focal lengths, a viewing frame, a tripod mount, use of film holders, etc. All of this would take extra time to build from scratch.

 

For really cheap and simple, there's the Merlin camera (PaintCanCamera.com). They use clean metal paint cans and a flat washer with a magnet for a shutter. They're $9 for the small; $19 for the large. Or just use the idea and start with an empty paint can from Home Depot for a buck or two.

 

Regards, David

[Sandeha Lynch]

When I made my third pinhole camera, I started with a standard 4x5 sheet film holder and built a wooden back for that to fit into. It was a top-cover-to-bottom type of fitting, but I could just as easily have put a hinge on the two sections. Once that was done I could build a box of any focal length to attach to it. I built the front end of the camera with two conical sections as I like the idea of trying out double slits as well as pinholes. <p>The focal length is obviously the distance from the pinhole to the sheet film surface, but there are optimum sizes for the pinhole for each focal length so that you get the best compromise between illumination and focus. You'll find all the necessary data tables for pinhole sizes, apertures, etc, in "Adventures with Pinhole and Home-Made Cameras" by John Evans, RotoVision. It's great fun and the potential is almost unlimited.<p>

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/sandeha/pinhole/pinhole_page01.htm">sample pinhole shot</a>

[j.w.]

Matt; Its amazing now how many resources there are on the web for pinhole photography, and how many photographers are practicing this art. Me, I got into pinhole some 10 years ago, partly because it is (or was) off the beaten bath from the mainstream of photography. It seems now that more and more people are discovering it, which is great.

 

I suspect the reasons for its resurgence are many, but one reason may be that the end is in site for chemical photography as a mainstream craft, mostly because of the convergence of photography with consumer electronics. More people are discovering the primal nature of the micro aperture as a fundimental imaging device.

 

More to the point of your post, pinhole is intimately linked with DIY camera building, and there are as many varied designs as there are photographers out there. That's one of the joys of the craft - coming up with your own design, making it work, then making images with it. Its a complete craft, that gives one a sense of fulfillment perhaps unique in photography.

 

Some practical points to camera building. You don't need 'camera movements' as we normally think of them in LF; although in principle you could alter the relationship between the film plane and subject plane to make converging lines of a high-rise building parallel, for instance, you'll find the image circle of a well-made pinhole is limited to about 120 degrees, and even then you'll see at least a 1-stop falloff of light at the corners - making movements unrealistic.

 

In my experience the greatest advantage pinhole offers for DIY camera building is virtually unlimited depth of focus at the film plane. Imagine making a homemade box camera for glass lenses. You would need a very accurate film holder plane, with GG viewscreen for focussing, or a carefully calibrated hyperfocal setup.

 

Not so with pinhole. Although there are formulae out there, all variants of the Rayleigh criteria, for determining optimal focal length, the whole point is just not making the hole so small that it suffers from diffraction. My experience has shown that exposure times will become unwieldy long before you get so small that diffraction becomes a real issue - at least with paper negatives.

 

My camera designs have all gravitated over the years to employ features that attempt to overcome, at least in part, some of the tradeoffs inherent with LF, such as the need to carry heavy and bulky film holders. For instance, I have several cameras that use matte-board film holders, stacked in the rear of the box; after exposure the front holder is allowed to drop face-down to the bottom of the box, revealing the next holder, using a unique mechanism.

 

This is where the wide depth of focus of pinhole comes to the rescue in such designs, which would normally have may too much variability in position within the camera to be useful with a glass lens.

 

So start off by building a one-shot box (cardboard, wood or anything...); then get real good at taking good exposures with it. Initially, focus on picture taking instead of camera building. Remember, its ultimately about the final print (even though building cameras is fun in itself).

[jon_grepstad1]

<p>Please note that in October 2015 my webpages on pinhole photography and building large format cameras move to: jongrepstad.com</p>

<p>Jon Grepstad</p>