Pinhole Camera Construction – Andy D Duncan Photography

Back in high school, I made my first pinhole camera. I don’t even remember what I made it out of. Maybe an empty bulk 35mm film can. Then, in college, I made another one. Or two or three. Then the one semester I taught as a grad student, I built another pinhole camera, and even made a pinhole “lens” for my D300, and shot a few digital pinholes. And as I type this, I’m feeling the urge to do it again. It was incredibly easy to do…

Now I’ve got the bug again, partly because of a few people I’ve begun following on Instagram, and have been scheming and planing cameras in my head. Last week I started construction on two cameras built out of two empty iPhone boxes. They should be capable of filling a 6×9 negative, but not quite a 6×12, though the interior of the box is big enough to hold a piece of film that size.

Here are some pictures documenting the process thus far:

Center located and marked for opening to be cut out, exterior of box masked for painting the inside

Center cut out for pinhole sheet placement, matte board glued to the inner perimeter of the box to set a 55mm “focal length”

Matte board glued to inside of inner box to help create a baffle to prevent light leaks

Interior of boxes being painted with matte black paint

Pinhole drilled in 0.001″ brass shim stock

Pinhole mounted to matte board which is mounted to the box

Both halves of the box put together to test fit

All that is left now in the build is to paint the shutters black, and then test for light leaks. Guess I’d better get some developer.

i can’t wait to start making images with these!