The Artistic Misadventures of Ms. Rose: Make Your Own Pinhole Camera

I have a tendency to get one-mindedly obsessed about craft projects until I do them.  That’s how I got to feeling about making my own pinhole camera.  I could make my own camera?  Me? Out of a juice box?  Out of a matchbox? 

Well, this sounds complicated.  Sign me up!

I was so driven by desire to figure out how the heck I could place a roll of film inside a matchbox and get pictures.  Without batteries! I completely abandoned all other things I was supposed to be doing and I went straight home and watched video after video on Youtube about constructing my own pinhole camera.

I then took myself shopping, and I was quite surprised most places don’t actually sell film anymore.

I did find film at Walgreens, and I decided on black and white film which has always been so much more exciting and mysterious than regular film.  I bought three rolls.  I was going to take lots of pictures with my new pinhole camera.

At home I sat down at the kitchen table.  (By now, if you’ve joined me on a misadventure before, you may have noticed my kitchen table is never used for eating meals, but for artistic experiments.)  I spread out in front of me black electrician’s tape, empty rolls of film, new rolls of film, a mini matchbox, an X-acto knife and the directions I needed.  There were a few other supplies called for, but I decided not to use them because it seemed too tedious.  (This is why I usually don’t succeed at recipes — I always decide to leave out things when I don’t think they’re necessary (like onions) or if I don’t want to go to the store.)

I meticulously followed the directions (unless I couldn’t figure out why I should do something the way they suggested, like a tin foil pinhole instead of a cardboard one or Why can’t I push the needle through the cardboard all the way to the eye?  Bigger is better, right? I’ll use an embroidery needle, it’s thicker!)

I colored the inside of the matchbox black.  I taped all the parts together.  I thoroughly impressed myself with my ability to tape together an old piece of film sticking out of an old canister to a new one.  I covered the entire outside of my camera with black tape.

It even looked like a camera.

I decided to go outside to take pictures with my new masterpiece of a pinhole camera.

I took a picture of prayer flags faded by weather hanging in the Chinese elms and waving in the wind, the black cat frolicking in the garden, and my big dog looking at me with his endearingly dopey expression.  I took a photograph of my harmonium.  I tried to do something artistic: take a photo of myself in different places throughout the exposure.  At this time in my photographic career I wasn’t even sure what “exposure” meant, but figured longer was better, right?

When the roll of film was used up, I then set about the task of developing the film.

Things have changed since the last time I developed a roll of film in 2004.  Now everyone sends film away.  I’m so used to digital camera instant-gratification — I wanted to see my pictures now!  Not wait a whole week.

When my pictures were finally ready I excitedly went home to put the disk in my computer to see what sort of ethereal masterpieces I had created.

For some reason most of the pictures looked like I tried to take a photograph of the sun.  Some had slightly identifiable shapes in them.  One vaguely looked like a dog.

After this trial and error pinhole camera experiment, and after hours of puttering around, I have gathered an even simpler method of making your own pinhole camera for my most dedicated artistic misadventure-ers.

How to make a pinhole camera adaptor for your DSLR: 1. Remove the lens from your camera.  2. Tape a piece of tin foil over your camera where the lens goes.  3. Poke a teeny, tiny hole in the tin foil.  4. Take a bunch of digital pictures with your homemade pinhole adaptor until you figure out what the heck aperture, ISO, and shutter speed are, and how they work with a pinhole adaptor.

Of course, I do encourage you to make a pinhole camera using film (just follow your chosen directions!).  I too will be giving pinhole cameras another dabble …  all in the name of adventure!

An early version of this post appears on this blog, and this article appeared first in The Noise.