Ian Wallace Photographer and Photo Historian

Construction of the Pinhole Camera

If you’ve never built a pinhole camera its really quite easy but you will benefit from the help of a website like http://www.mrpinhole.com/ where there are simple online calculators to help you calculate the f stop aperture you will be working with. The size of the camera box is all that needed to get started with most of these online calculators. My camera came out as having an aperture of f325.

As you can see, I went over all the joins in the box with tape to ensure it was light tight. A piece of coke can was pierced carefully with a sewing needle. The aluminium was then taped over a hole in the front of the box. The little black flap of electrical tape over the pinhole, acts as a shutter. Inside the box I constructed a little slot. This was to slide the photo paper into to keep it in place at the back. This avoided having to tape the photographic paper in.

A Little Practice

I was quite pleased with the first image from the camera (shown above). It has a sharpness that you might not anticipate for a camera with no lens. Using normal photographic paper produced a good negative for contact printing.

Further tests followed before the big day including this selfie with my wife in the garden. The exposure was so long, I could easily open the shutter walk back sit for the picture then get up and close the shutter!

For this picture I also tried out the Van Dyke contact printing. I planned to use technique this for my final World Pinhole day entry.

April 24 – The Big Day

On World Pinhole my wife and I visited a garden that was open as a part of the National Gardens Scheme. The Old Rectory, Farnborough is in a little village near Wantage, in Berkshire. The Rectory was built in the mid-18th century and it remained in church ownership until 1945. For a while the Rectory was the home of John Betjeman, the poet laureate.

I only had one exposure, because I would be unable to change the light sensitive paper negative during our visit. After a leisurely stroll around the lovely gardens I decided where I would locate the camera. I decided to simply place it on the the lawn beneath a lovely cherry tree. At the time many visitors were milling around in front of the house. As you might expect, almost no one remained in the same place for the several minutes of the exposure. In my photograph, you just see the welcoming party. The party are seated under an umbrella near the front door.

You can see my photograph along with many other amazing images in the 2022 gallery on the pinhole.org website. You will also find a great resources page on this website if you want to build your own camera. Next year you too could join in world pinhole day!