Pinhole Shortcuts
By Sara Holt
25 Sep 2009
Pinhole photography is such a wondrous and fun side of the art. You'd think there would be less of an image or impact of an image with pinhole, but just the opposite is true. The intimacy and mystery of a pinhole image adds to the wow factor of a photograph. The downside to pinhole has always been the guesswork involved in exposure times and the fact that you have to develop them yourself. For those of us without our own darkrooms this can be a big obstacle in realizing our pinhole dreams, until, now. There is a very cheap and easy alternative to traditional pinhole, I call Pinhole Shortcuts.
This process begins with a small piece of aluminum foil, some tape, and a needle. Fit your foil over your lens, tape it up so that no light leaks in through the sides, make your needle hole right in the center, if you want a more traditional looking pinhole image, make the needle hole a bit bigger than the needle tip is, just poke it into the foil and circle it around in the foil to make your pinhole a bit larger. Then, go click away. This works for manual 35mm cameras, toy cameras, mini 110 cameras, and digital cameras, too. The photo above shows where I've made a Holga type square hole for a manual 35 mm camera and a pinhole shortcut on my mini 110 toy spy pinhole camera. The images you come away with are classic pinhole, fun, mysterious, with a flair of the artistic beauty of pinhole photography. This can be done with any camera, but in my experience it works best with cheap older 35mm cameras like the one I have pictured with my square Holga hole. I'd love to see your new pinhole shots after you try this experiment, please share them with the world!
6 responses
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Brian Betteridge gave props (25 Sep 2009):
those are really interesting shots and that looks like a fun thing to try! i'll give it a go one day.
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Sara Holt said (25 Sep 2009):
Awesome, Brian! I'd love to see your shots..please send me a link when you post!!
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Janet Matthews gave props (28 Sep 2009):
Nice article. I've been meaning to work with pinhole photography - this may be the push I need. Well done!
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Sara Holt said (28 Sep 2009):
I hope so, Janet! Your work is extraordinary and very inspiring!! I've been using my scanner as a camera this weekend and taking my pointers from you! Thank You!!
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Simon Thomas said (4 Oct 2009):
Great article. How do you judge the exposure times for pinhole shots? Is there a secret to it?
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Sara Holt said (4 Oct 2009):
Well, the way I do it and the cameras I use don't allow for me to change the exposure times....pretty much point, shoot, and click, but it works. In traditional pinhole you do need to experiment with exposure time, that's part of the beauty of pinhole shortcuts....it's the foil filter that gives the pinhole effect.
