Pinhole camera

After a few weeks of blood and sweat and tears, I completed building pinhole camera. It uses 120 film, and shoot 6x6 photos. The result of test shots was simply horrible. It was quite a shock to me. Because of this shock, I kept eating for three days until my body weight became 600lb. Well, just kidding.

Looking at the photos, you can tell on the spot that light was leaking from somewhere. You could say “this light leaks give real taste to the photos”, like HOLGA users. But my craftsmanship does not allow me to say that.

The second problem was related to the shutter mechanism. The edge of the wood that makes shutter clearly showed on the photos. This has no excuse to say “this gives real taste to the photos”. This kind of problem does not happen even with HOLGA.

By the way, I do not have any hostility against HOLGA. I want to make things clear, in case somebody got offended.

In order to get rid of light leaks, I had to redo black painting in the camera. I also scraped some wood around the shutter mechanism to make the hole bigger. At this point, I must say I completely ruined the nice cosmetic feature of my pinhole camera. It now looks like a face of failed face lifting surgery. In addition, I had to give up my initial idea of the shutter mechanism with release cable. Now it is just like a toilet door. Shame on me!

Using 120 films means you have to ship out to pro lab. It takes about 2weeks for processed films to come back. I built a camera, test shot, sent films, and waited for 2 weeks. Then I checked the results, revised the camera, test shot, then waited for another 2 weeks. It was a long painstaking process.

After many weeks of struggling, my camera has become reasonable shape.









These are just test shots to see if the camera works or not. I do not accept any artistic criticism this time, even from my loving wife.

I am not totally sure but my guess is this camera is F256. During the test shot, I bracketed for F256, F 360, and F512, just in case. To my surprise, there weren’t much differences between these photos. This must be reciprocity law failure. It is just like experimenting in science. This is fun.

This means you do not have to be so precise with exposure. This is even better, since I am not a guy with type A personality.

My next project will be to make another pinhole camera with better appearances. I have not decided, though, that next one will be beautiful or cute, or sexy one.


( Japanese translation )