Guest blogger Brendan Monroe shares tips and images from his mooncake tin pinhole camera. Brendan is also a brilliant illustrator; check out some of his science-inspired drawings at http://www.brendanmonroe.com/.
If you are interested in photography and want to try something very different from a digital camera, try a pinhole. I made mine because I wanted a 35mm camera and I didn’t want to go through the bother of shopping for one. Sure, I could go out and buy a camera, but why not make one?
You probably have all the materials you need to make a pinhole camera in your home already – with the exception of the roll of film. Pinhole cameras can be made out of all kinds of things like matchboxes, oatmeal containers or even pumpkins.
The mooncake tin pinhole camera
I chose the mooncake tin that was in my kitchen. I wanted to make one that was easy to carry, reusable and big enough to load a roll of 35mm film into. The most important thing is that it was a light-tight container. The square shape and durability were a plus. Building the camera takes a bit of trial and error. There are plenty of how-to videos online, but I used this one.
Diagram of the camera, © Brendan Monroe
I spent about two evenings after work making the camera and then I ran out the next day to go test it. When I got the first roll developed, I was a little disappointed. It functioned, but the photos were pretty blurry. It’s really exciting to see that you can make an actual photographic camera with junk lying around the house, and you can see the images you took, but kinda just barely.
I discovered that there’s some math involved here — depending on focal depth, size of the hole and exposure times. I’m not the best with complicated equations, so I found this helpful application to do it all for me. Basically, what it boils down to is that it’s best to make the smallest and cleanest hole possible. Then your photos will come out well, or at least much better than bad. I got something I was happy with on my third try. Here are a few of my images:
If you like to fix things or find out how things work, give this a try. It was surprising to see what you get when you take away most of the things we consider a camera to be. The results are raw and basic, but they show the science behind the cameras we take for granted, on all of our smart phones sitting in our pockets.
For more info, here are two other artists who have played a little with pinhole cameras:
Ann Hamilton used her mouth as a camera in her “Face to Face” series.
Jason Kalogiros made one with two holes in an oatmeal container to make his series of “Double Sunsets”.
Related: Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day
