On world pinhole day this year, I took out a couple of pinhole cameras for a hike. The main one was my Ondu 6×9, which I got at Christmas and am fairly comfortable using. But I’ve also been intrigued by folks who use film canisters as home-made pinholes. The superwide angle gives some really interesting effects.
I got some advice from Margaret – justgypsy on Twitter, and Karin Lizana, and made my camera.
It’s a simple design – you drill a hole in the cannister and attach a pinhole to the inside. For the pinhole I cut out a square from an aluminium can and made a small hole using a a sewing needle. I sanded it off to make the edges neater, this improves sharpness (or rather unsharpness). To put it in place I cut a diamond from the centre of a piece of black tape and positioned the pinhole in the centre of the drilled hole.
For the pinhole cover, I thought about using some black duct tape, but thought it would be vulnerable inside my rucksack. So I opted to cut up a spare cannister to make a sliding shutter.
I loaded some photographic paper (7mm long) and used a phone holder mounted on my tripod. It was small and light enough to be portable. There are other methods using magnets and brackets but this worked for me.
It was windy out on the moors so I attached the podcam to my tripod and weighted it down to prevent camera shake. It appeared to work better than the Ondu which was more vulnerable due to its shape and size. All good so far.
However, when I got it home and developed it, the paper was black. I guess the shutter had slipped off at some point before or after the exposure. I’d had in mind dreamy distorted rock on a windswept moor but it wasn’t to be. I didn’t want to admit defeat on world pinhole day so I put in in another slip of photographic paper and got the image below, with the pod sitting on a table in the conservatory.
While I was at it, I took the opportunity to test out my Stenoflex which was an Emulsive Secret Santa gift.
Given that it’s just a cardboard box with a hole in it, I was impressed with the results.
The extreme vignetting gives an interesting effect and makes it feel more negative than positive.
And the hiking shot? My favourite pinhole from the trip, is this one, taken on my Ondu 6×9: