Pinhole photography is easily done without a lot of high tech equipment. All you really need is an oatmeal box, a thin piece of tin or brass, a nail or pin, tape, film or photosensitive paper, and a watch with a second hand. It's a lot of fun, and great for teaching kids about the fundamentals of photography. The results are often very cool looking, kind of moody. But this method is pretty imprecise. Obviously, without a viewfinder it is pretty hard to frame your subject; without a shutter, exposures are counted in seconds instead of fractions thereof. So you tend to get off-kilter, under to overexposed, blurry photos after hours or even weeks of anticipation, waiting to get your film (or paper) developed. If you are as impatient as I am, this is the worst part- waiting for the results.
Well, thank goodness that we live in the Digital Age!
You can get great pinhole images with your digital SLR camera AND you don't need to wait to see the results, so you can adjust your next shot after instant review from your camera. Here's how I did it:
Get the body dust cap that came with your camera when you first purchased it. I know, if you're like me, you threw it away the moment you attached a lens- you can pick them up on ebay for a couple of bucks. Drill a 1/2" to 3/4" hole in the center of the cap Make your pinhole aperture in a thin piece of metal and glue it over the hole you drilled in the cap so that light cannot leak around the edges. Connect the cap to the SLR body and Bob's yer uncle! If you are not a do-it-yourself-er, you can find these caps ready made for sale on ebay and other on-line camera retailers. This is what your camera will look like:
There are much more detailed instructions on making pin-hole cameras on the web. My favorites are here:
How to make a pin-hole camera
Making a pin-hole camera
http://anttila.ca/michael/pinholelens/
And here you can purchase a pre-made cap for your DSLR:
Lenox Laser
This is how I set my D200 to take the photo below; today was a bright, sunny day in Boston, so I set the ISO sensitivity at 100, the camera mode into Manual, manual focus, Black and White color-space. My camera has Through-the-lens viewing, and because there is no lens I couldn't see anything through the eyepiece to set up the shot. So, camera mounted on a tripod, I started taking set-up shots at different exposures between 2s and 15s, adjusting the aim of the camera until I got the framing I was happy with. Then I shot with the most successful exposure time from previous practice shots. The result is the shot below of the Loring-Greenough house in Jamaica Plain.
