The first camera I made turned out to be the best. I used a shoebox that was large enough to fit a whole piece of 8.5 x 11" paper inside. For the aperture I cut 1" x 1" squares out of aluminum cans, made a tiny hole in the center with the tip of a sewing needle, and used sandpaper to smooth the hole. Since the box was so large I put 3 apertures on my camera (horizontally across the lid).
Remember that unlike the paper you stick in your printer to print your digital photos, this type of photo paper must not be exposed to light except when taking your photo! Loading the camera meant going into the darkroom, applying tape onto the back side of the photo paper so that it could stick to the inside of the shoe box (opposite the lid), and putting the lid back on. I had to seal the box very well to prevent light leakage using black electrical tape. Then I used the back tape to make 3 "lens caps" for the apertures on the front of the box.
Here is a sketch I did of my setup. Sorry about the quality, it was my first time using google sketchup.
To take a photo I would then go to my location (close to darkroom since I had to repeat the process for each photo) and steady the camera. With my subject matter in front of the camera I would peel the black tape off of the holes and count in my head a certain number of seconds depending on how sunny it was outside. It was more or less a guessing game. I think I found that 10 seconds or so was enough time for a sunny day. After I was done taking the photo I would cover the apertures again, return to the dark room, remove all of the tape, and put the photo paper in the chemicals to develop and make my negative. Then I took my negative (the original sheet of photo paper that came from inside my camera) over to the enlarger and used a new sheet of photo paper to make my positive.
Later I experimented with other pinhole camera designs, but none were as good as the first. The second best was a camera I made out of the small box my film came in where I could manually wind film through so that after taking a photo I would wind approximately 2" of film from one reel to the other and could then take another photo. I worked really hard on this design since it meant I could take 15 to 20 photos before I had to return to the darkroom. Unfortunately, it seemed like no matter how much black tape I used some light always seemed to find a way in. Also, my high tech winding mechanism (a paper clip taped to the film canister) broke a few times and occasionally the film would break off of the reel which required me to remove all the tape and go back into the darkroom to fix it. It was a total headache!
Here's what my camera looked like as it was being assembled
Here is a photo of someone else's camera to give you an idea for how the finished product looked.
Here's what my camera looked like as it was being assembled
Here is a photo of someone else's camera to give you an idea for how the finished product looked.
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An example of how the film would look after developing.
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And for more fun... Check out cool pinhole photos people have uploaded to flickr.
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