Weird pinhole camera roundup

Posted 20 June, 2006 in Pinhole + Camera Hacking & DIY

The great thing about making cameras is that they’re really dead simple: box + light detector (film or sensor) + hold for light = camera. When there’s no lens involved, there’s heaps of room for creativity. While many people opt for more traditional materials like wood, metal, foamcore, or modify an existing camera, some people go all out.

Here’s a [doubtless incomplete] roundup of some of the stranger things I’ve seen people make pinhole cameras out of, to date. Note that many of these links have construction instructions!

• alspix’s matchbox cam
• Wayne Martin Belger’s Third Eye Camera (human skull) and heaps of other weird and beautiful stuff
• CameraTruck is self-explanatory
• Melsen Carlsen’s vagina
• Katie Cooke’s holiday card box cam; photos made with it and other pinholes
• Travis Gray’s Mr. Photato Head (Mr. Potato Head toy)
• Adrian Hanft’s Lego cameras: 35mm, medium format, photos made with them
• Marcus Kaiser used the Berlin Wall
• Chris Keeney’s SPAMera (Spam tin, pictured above) and Mintycam (mint tin)
• The Legacy Project just set a world record for the largest camera and largest photograph using an airplane hangar
• Marcy Merrill’s Pintoids (Altoids tin)
• Chris Peregoy built a pinhole out of a coconut, but I can’t find any info on it other than this
• Rodrigo Perez’s large rubbish bin camera
• Martin Pilný, Mirek Kolář, and Richard Vyškovský’s Dirkon paper camera
• Thomas Hudson Reeve’s cameras made entirely of photo paper
• Justin Quinnell’s SmileyCam (his mouth) and toilet paper tube

If you’re looking to build your own, f295 Lensless Photography Discussion Forum is a great resource full of freakishly helpful camera hackers.

Know of anything I missed? Tell us!

Comments

Ignacio Martinez Vazquez
June 20, 2006 at 5:15 pm

You missed the clay camera, it’s on f295.

Bruce
June 20, 2006 at 5:16 pm

How about anamorphic cameras made from 35mm film canisters?

http://www.f295.org/Pinholeforum/forum/Blah.pl?b-cm/m-1142904974/

Matt Callow
June 20, 2006 at 5:20 pm

Here’s my friend Ross Orr’s coffee pot cam, and how can I not plug my own pinhole camera made from a book…

Joe Reifer
June 20, 2006 at 6:54 pm

And for those who also like information in analog formats, have a look at the great book:

Adventures With Pinhole and Home-Made Cameras: From Tin Cans to Precision Engineering

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/2880467144/sr=1-1/qid=1150847634/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-7509548-5843022?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books

squeak
June 21, 2006 at 12:56 am

Nitpicky: the camera truck uses a lens to sharpen the images so it disqualifies it as a pinhole camera.

Thanks for the rest there are a few I didn’t know about before.

taco
June 21, 2006 at 5:18 pm

There is another “big” pinhole camera, but the URL is only in German language:
http://www.bauwagenkamera.de/

Nicolai Grossman
June 22, 2006 at 6:20 pm

I may have to do a follow-up with everyone’s great links!

squeak, good catch! I got that confused with another camera truck that is a pinhole.

John
June 27, 2006 at 10:54 am

Theres my high capacity pinhole camera made out of fomecore, that’s kind of weird…

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April 5, 2007 at 7:54 am

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Weird Biz
August 30, 2007 at 6:08 pm

Howdy. I love the idea of making a weird camera like that… That’d be mighty fitting in fact. Dig it, fo’ real!

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