O'Connell Street, Dublin

Some long time ago you may remember my saying that I was about to do some work with a Pinhole Camera. Well it has taken quite a while but at long last and after problems with the first attempt, I managed to get it working.

The camera is basically a cardboard box about the size of a small compact digital camera which was put together from a kit of punch out and stick 'em together parts. The shutter is a piece of card which covers the aperture and is simply pulled upward to make the exposure and pushed back down to terminate it. The aperture is simply a tiny hole, laser burned into a piece of plastic and is roughly about f128.The camera uses ordinary 35mm film and exposure in good light is about 1.5 seconds with ISO200 film. There is no viewfinder of course, so lining up the subject is a bit hit or miss but not a huge problem.

Because there is no glass lens, indeed no lens of any sort, and on account of the extremely small aperture, the images are fuzzy, full of abberations and utterly different from what we are used to. After development I simply scanned the negs. This shot was done with the camera jammed up against a lamp post and you will notice the blur of the pedestrians on the right and of the little bit of traffic which was present, due to the long exposure. For best effect this needs to be presented with a bit of a scruffy border but as borders are a no go area here in blipland you will have to do with the plain version.

Fairly shortly I will be heading off to my CS5 course. Wont be back until 10.30pm so commenting will have to wait for the most part until tomorrow.

By the way, you can have a go at this with a DSLR too. All you need is a piece of tin foil stuck on where the lens should be. Punch as small a hole in the centre of the foil with a tiny needle and away you go. Just dont let any dirt and grime into the camera. For the more sophisticated, get an old body cap. drill hole in dead centre of same and put that on the body instead of the lens.

Edit...
See below, comment from cameralady, for the detail I did not include here...