Lately I’ve gotten rather into film photography. As an extension of that, I’ve also taken to building my own pinhole cameras. My goal is to build one using wood, but in order to validate my design, I built some prototypes out of foam board.
Here’s an image taken from the first prototype. It has a 50mm focal length and 0.3mm pinhole diameter. This works out to an aperture of f/168. The image is taken on 120 format film, with a 6x6 frame size.
This is what the prototype looked like. It’s rather basic, though it still took me several hours to build. This was my first time working with foam board.
With the concept validated, I began designing the final version using CAD software. Here are the specs I settled on:
- Focal length: 60mm
- Pinhole diameter: 0.3mm
- Aperture: f/200
- Frame size: 6x12
I decided on a 6x12 frame size because I already have a 6x6 TLR camera. A wider frame would be nice to have. However, at a 6x12 frame size, and at a 60mm focal length, the image diameter doesn’t extend to the edges of the frame. This results in vignetting. To validate if the vignetting would be acceptable, I built another prototype with the above specifications. Here is an image from the second prototype.
There is some noticeable vignetting, but nothing serious. Near the edges are also some light leaks, courtesy of the rather hastily made prototype. This one I knocked together in an hour or so.
Scrappy prototype aside, I now knew that my chosen camera specs would work. The next step would be to start building it.
My design is somewhat ambitious. It’s currently outside my woodworking skill level. A pinhole camera requires the parts to be built to very tight tolerances. So while I have the wood and hardware ready to go, I’m going to park this project for a little while longer. The past few weeks I’ve been doing other little woodworking projects to hone my skills. Slowly, but surely, I’m working my way up to being able to pull this project off. I’ll post a writeup of the process after I’ve finished it.