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Boxes with a hole
Guide to make pinhole cameras using recycled materials by Thomas Monticelli
Index of topics and cameras
1. Introduction 2. Pinhole camera 3. Camera body 4. Pinhole 5. Shutter 6. Stabilizing the camera 7. Adjusting the horizon 8. Stands for photographic film or paper 9. Darkroom 10. And finally the shooting 11. Notebook 12. Chips & Fast Camera 13. SPB Camera 14. BiscoPanoramica 15. Caffe Camera 16. Multi-Snap Sorini 17. Good but ugly 18. DigiCap
p. 7 p. 8 p. 9 p. 12 p. 16 p. 19 p. 22 p. 23 p. 27 p. 35 p. 37 p. 39 p. 42 p. 44 p. 46 p. 48 p. 53 p. 56
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Pinhole
Pinhole Normally, the pinhole is made from a metal foil sheet, which is then glued on a previously cut hole on the camera’s body. This hole is done in the center of the side chosen as the front of the camera. On cardboard, making this hole presents no difficulty, just use a pair of scissors or a utility knife; on tin, you must arm yourself of a drill with points between 5 and 8 mm (= 0,19/0,31 inches) and work delicately piercing without bending the metal surface of the body of the object. After making the hole on the carton or tin, the edges of the hole need to be cleaned thoroughly (with fine sandpaper), so the edges will not have any imperfections. In the case of tin, it’s possible to make the pinhole (entry of light) directly on the camera’s body.
Conceptually the realization of the hole doesn’t present many difficulties, it’s a hole! But the characteristics it must have to be perfect are many: it must be perfectly circular, it mustn’t have thick edges, it must be done on a thin and robust sheet, it must be small and with a known measurement. Well, it must have all those peculiarities that our hand-made holes will never have.
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Pinhole
Some materials on which to drill the holes: aluminum foil, copper foil, lids taken from jars of yogurt.
To realize the hole I normally use a simple needle. It’s enough to put the metal foil you want to pierce on a soft surface (mouse pad or sponge) and slowly push the needle until it pierces the foil. Depending on the depth with which the needle is inserted, the hole will result more or less large and accordingly to this the time required to impress the paper/ film will decrease or increase.
0,6mm
Enlarged view of the tip of a needle; the bigger section measures 0.6 mm.
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Pinhole
Concerning surfaces, I’ve tried several materials but I think metal foils (such as copper) are the best. They are used in works of art such as the embossing technique, so are easily found in art shops. These plates are thin, robust enough to be cut and manipulated, they can be pierced with a simple needle and first of all, they are economic. Good results can also be obtained with scraps of foil from tin cans of soft drinks (be careful because they cut). Enlargement of the hole done with a needle on a metal foil of copper. You can see how the hole meets the characteristics an ideal pinhole should have.
Choosing from recycled materials, I realized holes with aluminum foil used for cooking and with the top of jars of yogurt. The aluminum foil is easy to find and to work with, but when making a hole you are likely to have jagged edges and also the foil itself deforms easily.
Hole made on an aluminum sheet; the dark areas represent the shadows created by the deformation of the surface. You can also see inside the hole a fragment of the foil. The deformations and fragments of the metal foil can create irregularities in the exposition of the paper/ photographic film; As a result, the photo will not be properly exposed. 14
Pinhole
Yogurt lids are strong and easy to work but the ones I used always had a dimpled surface preventing to have circular holes. The obtained holes were irregular ovals which didn’t allow to the light to pass through smoothly.
You can notice the irregularities of the surface of the aluminum foil used for closing the jar of yogurt. The hole has an irregular shape.
In the past I purchased a hole made with a professional laser to be used with a microscope; the hole was perfectly circular and with a known measurement, I realized very good shots with it! But it didn’t have the appeal of the unknown which comes from taking shots with craft componets. A hand-made hole is much more romantic. The hole is perfectly circular with a diameter of 0.3 mm.
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And now we have to move from words to deeds ......
Chips & Fast Camera
As a first example, there isn’t really a camera designed for photo shoots, but a pre-image display; This simple “tube” to irealize is a useful complement to be coupled to a camera because it allows to pre-visualize what will be the image we want to achieve with a pinhole camera. We need the pre-visualization to understand how to compose the final image, which elements enter and which are to exclude, in order to have a more balanced photo according to our desires. It needs a lot of light to function properly, therefore it’s suitable for outdoor use with natural lighting while it needs a strong artificial light for indoor use. The Chips & Fast previewer is also excellent as a teaching camera to understand concretely how an image is formed and created from a pinhole camera. A pre-image viewer is very easy and quick to build, it needs very little material: a tube of potato snack made of aluminum or cardboard, a knife, a sheet of tracing paper, black tape and a needle/ pin.
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1. Open the tube being careful not to break the sheet of plastic or aluminum which seals the opening and empty the content (not necessarily eating it all).
2. Cut in half the tube using a knife (be careful not to injure your fingers) and taking care not to deform the circular shape of the container.
3. Roll out and fix with duct tape the sheet of glossy paper on half of tube, where you have made the cut, trying to stretch it as much as possible avoiding folds and ripples (the image will form on this surface and if the sheet is not perfectly flat this will be deformed). 4. Fix the other half of the tube with adhesive tape so there are no openings where stray light can enter. With the same tape secure the original paper, which sealed the opening of the tube, to its original position. 5. Cut out a square hole in the sheet opening using a utility knife; This hole must be large enough to be able to see inside of the tube with one eye, do not overdo with its size otherwise it’ll be more difficult to see the image pre-displayed. 6. On the bottom of the tube make a hole with the needle in the center, this will be the light entrance and will create the picture on the glossy paper. Compared to cameras, this hole must be bigger to allow the entry of more light, as our eye is less sensitive than photo paper; to figure out the right dimen40
sions proceed in an empirical way, doing the hole of a certain size and trying to see if at the sunlight you will see an image on glossy paper. If the image displayed is still dark or invisible, the hole has to be widened to allow an acceptable luminosity. Please remember that the bigger the hole will be, the less sharp the image will be, so it’s necessary to find a compromise between sharpness and brightness.
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First italian edition 2015