Building a pinhole camera

Building your own pinhole camera can be very simple. You will need:

A container that can be made light tight
A piece of metal foil
A pin
Electrical tape
Black paint

The Seymour 135B camera is a matchbox camera that I made to exactly fit 135-film rolls. Apart from the layout you will need a film cassette, the kind used for loading your own films from bulk rolls, to use as a take up spool. More tips on how to build you own matchbox camera can be found here.

A description of how to make a simple box pinhole camera to use with photographic paper follows here:

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1. Find a box that can be made light tight.

This is going to be my camera. A box with a very large hole in the front. This will need to be covered of course. I will place the pinhole itself on the back of the box and the distance between the pinhole and the photographic paper will be 65mm.

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2. Cut a piece of metal foil that you can use to make the pinhole.

I found an emptied tomato paste tube that I'm going to use. The tube metal is soft enough to be cut with a regular pair of scissors (but maybe you shouldn't use your favourite pair).

The tech side

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Building a pinhole camera

1. Find a box that can be made light tight.

2. Cut a piece of metal foil that you can use to make the pinhole.

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