It’s DIY-Friday again, and we’ve got a cool little weekend project for you! Last week, we kicked off the “DIY Large Format” project with a quick discussion and a few links to get your gears turning. There was a lot of great discussion in the comments and a few of you started building your cameras. Awesome!

I spent my Saturday afternoon gathering supplies and making pinhole cameras (one for myself and one with each kid). Total time for making three cameras was about two hours. You could probably build an entire camera in an hour if you had all of your tools and materials ready to go. I also spent about $30, but most of that was in the teeny-tiny drills I picked up.

Being an engineer, I had to keep myself in check so I didn’t go full-on “geek mode” over this thing. The main idea for camera 1.0 was to be cheap, easy to make, and very basic. Future cameras will incorporate more features and complexity. I decided on a cardboard box pinhole camera that exposed 8×10 sheets of photo paper. It doesn’t get much more basic than that. So if you’ve been waiting for a tutorial before starting the project, here it is!

Materials & Tools

• Cardboard box
• Empty soda or beer can
• Duct tape
• Flat black spray paint
• Box knife, razor blade, X-Acto knife, etc.
• Scissors
• Fine grit sandpaper
• Hobby drill (or small needle)
• Darkroom and photo paper

STEP 1: Plan Ahead!

The first thing you need to do is size your box. Two of the dimensions will be determined by your film/paper size. I went with an 8×10, and I found a box exactly 8×10″ on one side (and I have to trim my paper to make it fit, which is okay to do). You can also oversize the box, it won’t hurt anything. Another good option for paper negative shooters is the 5×7 since it’s a standard paper size. And 4×5 can be done by cutting an 8×10 into quarters.

Next, you’ll want to figure out a reasonable focal length. If you’re used to thinking in 35mm numbers, use this chart to convert a focal length to your chosen format — just pick your format at the top, run down the column until you find a full-frame focal length you want, and shoot over to the far left to see the actual focal length. This will tell you the approximate dimension for the depth of your box. My box turned out to be 240mm (9.5″) which equates to approximately 35mm focal length on a full frame camera. Just remember, shorter box = wide angle, longer box = telephoto.

Now that you have your focal length, you can size your pinhole with this very handy pinhole calculator. Right now, this will tell you how big to make your pinhole so you can get the correct drill bit or needle size. Most of us should be in the .3mm to .7mm range unless you’re doing some extreme focal lengths or format sizes. Pinhole size is important for these large format cameras, so plan it out!

STEP 2: Paint the Box

This is not totally necessary, but it can’t really hurt (unless you pick a glossy white paint). Painting the inside of the box in flat black will keep any stray light from bouncing around in there. It’s similar to using a lens hood — you should get better contrast and clarity on your exposure.

I just bought one can of the cheapest spray paint I could find and it coated the insides of three pinhole cameras before running out. Also, if you do paint, just do it outside so you don’t kill yourself.

STEP 3: Make the Lens

Grab an empty soda can and chop the top and bottom off with a crappy knife — just don’t cut your fingers off, you’ll need those to finish the camera. Now take a crappy pair of scissors and cut down the length of the tube-o-metal. Cut off a square(ish) chunk and trim off the ragged edges you made with the crappy knife. There’s your blank lens.

Sand that puppy down on both sides to get rid of any paint or coating. Keep sanding if you want to thin it out, but you shouldn’t need to go too far since our pinholes are fairly large — it’s the smaller format pinholes that need to be ridiculously thin for good results.

Flatten out your lens and drill or punch your pinhole with the appropriately sized tool (you planned ahead, right?). I picked up a range of hobby drills from #74 to #78 along with a nifty little spiral hand drill. I just set the metal on an eraser and drilled very lightly through it into the eraser. I would definitely recommend using these drills — they make nice round holes with very little punch-through material.

Now that you made a mess of your nice smooth lens, hit it again with the sandpaper to remove the burrs from the hole. Of course, you probably pushed some material back into your perfect pinhole, so check it out and clear it again if needed. Keep going back and forth until you have a clean pinhole lens, just try not to stretch the pinhole with repeated clearing.

You can also color the back of the pinhole lens with a permanent marker (making sure not to get ink in the pinhole). I guess this is supposed to help reduce reflections like the black paint, but I don’t have anything to compare against. It’s easy enough to do, so I did it.

STEP 4: Mount the Lens

The hard part is over, so let’s mount that lens! You’ll need to cut a hole in your box right in the middle of the face opposite from your film plane. I measured and marked my center, then I traced a quarter (~1″ diameter) to give me a hole outline. Now take an X-Acto knife (or something similar) and cut the hole. You can cut it larger if you want, just keep it smaller than the outer edges of the lens.

Time to tape the lens down to the camera body — but wait! Lay down the lens and trace around the metal. Now put down strips of duct tape centered on your outline, lay the lens down over that with the pinhole centered on the cutout hole, and tape it down with another layer of duct tape. That first layer will allow you to remove the second layer without ripping up your box in the event that you need to replace your pinhole.

You can also use a strip of tape to make your shutter — just cut a square of paper, lay it over the pinhole, and put the tape down over it. Fold over one end of the tape so you can grab it and pull it down when you need to expose the shot.

STEP 5: Tape the Box

Close up your box and tape every possible spot where light could get through. Corners, edges, everything. You want to make sure the box is light-tight so you don’t muddy your shots with stray light.

Don’t worry about the fact that you can’t get into the box anymore… we’ll cut our own door for that.

STEP 6: Cut the Door

On the side of your box (near your film back), pencil in a door about 3 or 4 inches wide and keep the top and bottom about an inch from the edges. This will be our film loading hatch, and it should look like a three sided rectangle (or a door with the uncut edge being the hinge). Before you cut, lay down strips of duct tape centered on the cut lines — this will allow you to remove the light seal without ripping up the box. Now, with your X-Acto knife, cut down the center of the tape strips you just placed.

You should be able to pop the door out from the box and it should hinge near the film plane. Make sure you cut the door large enough to get your hand through it. Even if the door is smaller than the film/paper, you can curl it a little so it fits through.

Now you can put more duct tape to cover the cuts you just made and you should be able to peel it off somewhat easily when you need to load and unload the film.

STEP 7: Go Play

So that’s about it! Just take the camera in the darkroom, turn on the safelight, and stick a piece of photo paper to the inside of the box with tape or that blue sticky-tak stuff. Close the door and tape it up. Make sure your pinhole is covered before you turn the lights back on. You should be ready to go shoot! One tip on the paper: cut about 1/4″ to 1/2″ from the long and short edges on one side if you plan on contact printing. This will make the film slightly smaller and you’ll get a nice black border around the contact print.

Before you head out the door, go back to the pinhole calculator and make note of your exposure time based on focal length, weather conditions, and film speed (ISO10 for paper outdoors). I found that my exposures were just about perfect when I followed the calculated times (and it worked for 3 different pinhole cameras).

Find something or somewhere to take a a photo of, set the camera down on something sturdy, weight the top of the camera (I used a big thick book), and expose. When the exposure is done, cover the pinhole and head back to the darkroom for developing.

We listed the darkroom equipment you’ll need for developing prints and paper negatives in a recent article, we covered the development process in a video tutorial, and we’ll do contact printing in the near future.

RESULTS:

Here are the scanned contact prints from my 8×10 camera and my kids’ 5×7 cameras. For our first shot, we didn’t trim the paper negative and we developed it with a paper developer. The contrast turned out way too high to work with (lots of pure blacks and whites). For the second shot, we trimmed our paper negatives and we developed in a 1:50 dilution of Agfa Rodinal (a film developer). The contrast was still pretty high, but much more manageable for printing.

Brian’s Shots:

Rex’s Shots:

Bailey’s Shots:

Anybody else building cameras yet? I know a few of you are, but I’m curious how many are planning on joining the project. Also, ask me any questions about this camera in case I forgot to mention something or if I skimmed over it too quickly.

After we get a few others building and testing their cameras, we’ll move on to camera 1.1 and talk about possible upgrades from camera 1.0.