I'm thinking of trying to make a pinhole "lens" out of the body lens cap on my Panasonic camera. The more research I do, the more confused I'm getting. Has anyone tried this? Can anyone suggest the diameter of the hole that needs to be made?
I suspect it is possible to calculate the optimal hole size. If I were you, I'd experiment. I'd make the body cap into a mount for holding interchangeable pinholes. Proof-of-principle would be to drill a hole say 1/4" in the cap, stick some black electrical tape over the hole, and poke a hole in it with a needle. That should give some range to experiment with.
The easiest way to make a pinhole lens from a lens cap is to drill a small hole in the cap and then use tin foil as the lens. Get some very fine needles to experiment with, starting from the finest available and progressing upwards, until you are getting results that you like. I've got the Skink pinhole lens and the hole in it is laser drilled and very small. Cheers Ray
Hi Bob here are my related experiments: The can't-wait-for-the-pinwide project Assumed optical rules are that a smaller hole gives a sharper picture but needs more exposure time, and a closer distance to the sensor gives a wider angle...
The finest needles I know of are acupuncture needles, and I have thousands of them in various sizes. If anyone wants a few, just let me know where to send them.
So it's truly a pin hole So it truly sounds that the "pinhole" is VERY small. I was first under the impression that it was something about 1/32" (.79 mm)
You can always buy a premade pinhole and attach to the bady cap. Photographic Pinholes by LENOX LASER If you want to make your own pinhole this site has a calculator to help determine the optimal pinhole size. http://mrpinhole.com/
with a cheap AGFA Clack* converted to a pinhole cam I made 6x9 b&w shots. Bad for me is the fact that I have only a Nikon Coolscan IV for 35mm... So many pics are in my head and must be shooted with my Pen...... *When I set up the cam in front of my Café Noir, the exposure time was so long that I easily walked into the frame and sat down......something like an old school selftimer......
There is a optimal pinhole size for every focal length. The optimal pinhole has the best sharpness, DOF and the least amount of aberrations. There are several pinhole calculators around the internet. Like this one Pinhole Size Calculator Just make sure that you make as round a hole as possible. After you poke the hole with a needle, use some sandpaper on the opposite side to make the edges of the hole smooth and round. You can also measure the size of the pinhole you made by using a scanner. Of course you can just poke a hole and test what it looks like on your camera. It also works quite well
Nice work Silverbullet, I checked out your work on Flickr. I especially like the B&W Amsterdam set. These appear to be older film shots, but I might be wrong. So many new comers to digital photography seem to be obsessed with sharpness and never discovered the softness and film grain film delivered. It's ironic, that 35+ years ago I never looked at grain the way I do today!
