Through the pinhole

For some time now, I've fancied having a go with a pinhole camera. That's a camera without a lens. You take the photo through a tiny pinhole, which, due to its tiny, pinholish nature, focuses the image for you. It works on exactly the same principle as my legendary hatescope. The tinier the pinhole, the better.

So, yesterday I gave it a shot:

Self-portrait taken with a pinhole camera
Yours truly yesterday.

I used my super-duper digital SLR camera, removing the lens and replacing it with the body-cap intended to protect the camera when the lens is off. I had a spare body-cap, so (before I put it on the camera, obviously) I drilled a smallish hole though it, then stuck a small piece of black plastic with a pinhole pushed through it over the hole. The plastic was cut from an old flowerpot.

This is a bit like having the world's best hi-fi and using it to play Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins.

More soft-focus (not blurry) pinhole photos here.

Richard Carter

A fat, bearded chap with a Charles Darwin fixation.

2 comments

  1. Surely it's more akin to hooking up your state-of-the-art hifi to play gramophone recordings made on wax cylinders, which I personally think is rather a fine idea. Then again, I do use a 42" LED TV to play my original 1980s Atari games console, so I'm probably not a great judge of such things.

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