Ruggedised Digital Pinhole Photography

I've always wanted to try pinhole photography with my digital camera, but I was held back by the hole itself - thin foil is fragile, so a camera with a pinhole lens can't just be thrown in your camera bag, and the "lens" itself is, of course, a hole - I worried about dust and dirt getting in the hole and damaging the sensor.

This instructable is how I got around both problems, both protecting the fragile foil between photos, and stopping dirt getting in though the pinhole.

You will need:

• A camera body cap that suits your camera, plus a rear lens cap to match. These are usually sold in a set, and cheap off-brand versions are available from your favourite online retailer, but if you have a physical camera retailer in your area, they often have cheap spares for sale (especially independent retailers).
• Clear plastic - thin acrylic is perfect. I used 2mm thick, but only because I didn't have any 1mm thick.
• Double-sided sticky tape
• Aluminium foil
• Sticky tape
• Drill plus "twist" or wood bits - one as small as you can, the other much larger.
• Sharp knife
• Scrap timber
• Soft cloth
• Scissors
• A needle or pin

All-in, as long as you don't need to buy any tools, this project should cost you less than £3.00 / $3.50

Measure and mark the centre of the camera body cap (the one the that fits to your camera body when you have no lens in place).

Rest the cap on your scrap timber and use the small drill-bit to pierce a pilot hole in the cap. I used a "brad point" drill-bit, which has a small spike in the centre. When drilling the first hole, I stopped as soon as the brad showed through to the inside of the cap.

Turn the cap over, and use the larger bit to make a larger hole in the cap.

Use the knife to scrape the edges of the hole smooth. Carefully remove and swarf or dust created by the drilling, using the cloth to wipe off dust that you can't shake off or blow free.

Cut a piece of foil large enough to cover the inside of the cover cap, but leaving space around it to add tape.

Lay the foil on your timber or a chopping board, and use your pin to make a hole in the centre.

Cut small pieces of tape, and use them to "tack" the foil into place inside the cap, with the pinhole as central as possible.

(The easiest way to do this is to stick a piece of tape to a clean smooth chopping board, and then cut across the tape with a sharp knife. The strips can be lifted and placed with the tip of the same knife.)

Make sure you press the tape firmly into place so that it does not fall off inside your camera later - I shudder to think of the damage adhesive tape could do to an exposed sensor chip!!

After a suggestion from a twitter friend, I first used the foil from the "cup" that small cakes are sold in, but the focus was poorer than I expected. I switched to the much thinner baking foil, and there was a marked improvement.

From the scrap plastic, I cut a piece large enough to cover the hole, plus a few millimetres on each side.

I laid the cap flat and placed several small drops of "hard plastic" glue around the edge of the hole, dragging the drops together to make a continuous line around the hole.

I carefully pressed the clear plastic into place, left it to dry and took more test shots.

They were appalling!

As near as I can work out, the fumes from the solvent-based glue I used had damaged the surface of the plastic, distorting the light entering the pinhole. Fortunately, I was able to prise the clear plastic off the cap to try again.

I cut another piece of clear plastic, and this time I used narrow strips of double-sided adhesive tape around the hole in the cap, and pressed the plastic firmly in place.

I also prepared and fitted a fresh piece of baking foil, pressing just the very tip of a fine sewing needle into the foil on my cutting mat. The hole is small enough that it turned out to be practically impossible to photograph clearly...

When you are not using the pinhole lens, you can protect the foil inside it by fitting on the second cap, the lens rear-cap, that comes with the body cap.

Otherwise, simply fit the modified body-cap to your camera, and you are ready to go!

Pinhole cameras let in very little light, so they need long exposure times. That means you need a tripod, or some other way to hold your camera still, plus a reasonably stationary subject. Scenery outdoors is ideal.

It also helps if you have a way to trigger your camera without touching it, such as a cable release or self-timer. My camera can be remotely controlled via wifi from an app on my phone.

It will do exposures up to 30 seconds long via its internal timer, or I can set exposure to "bulb", and the shutter open on one tap of my phone screen, and stay open until the next, meaning I can do exposures of minutes or hours, should I so desire.

The first two shots attached to this step are of my living room window, with exposure time of 15 and 30 seconds respectively (the curve in the telegraph pole is due to the ancient glass in my window). The third is an attempt at a selfie, sitting in the same window, with an exposure time of thirty seconds. It was really hard to sit rigidly still for that long! Next steps are to take the set-up on a hike to see what it makes of the local scenery, and maybe try portrait shots outdoors in full sunlight.

I'd love to see what you come up with as well - can you improve on the focus? What about playing with extension tubes? Share your shots in the comments, and if you share them on Instagram or Twitter, I'd love it if you'd tag me in (@KitemanX) so that I can see them.

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