Pinholes

Having an hour to spare this afternoon, I decided to have a go at making my own pinhole camera. The theory is that a small round hole will bend light in much the same way as a lens. A pinhole camera technically should have great depth of field even if the pics will be a little blurred.

Here's what I did:
1. Take a spare body cap for your DSLR and drill a biggish hole in it - I used an 8mm drill bit. Sand the hole down and carefully clean out the cap afterwards to stop dust getting into your camera.
2. Punch a pinhole in the metal lid of a jar (Branston Pickle in my case). I did this by gently hammering a small nail into the centre of the lid and then puching a pinhole through the lid with a needle.
3. Glue the metal lid onto the front of the lens cap and attach it to your camera instead of a conventional lens.
4. Play about with it. You have no exposure meter and no way of focusing, so a lot of trial and error seems neccessary. I used my tripod and juggled with long exposure times (1-4 seconds) and my ISO settings. My first efforts looked like this:


I wasn't happy with this and the lack of clarity, so I went back to the pinhole. I taped a piece of tin foil over the existing pinhole and then tried to gently punch a very very small hole with the finest needle I could find. I then re-attached this to my camera. Here's a couple of iphone shots of what it looked like.


Second time around the images seemed a bit better:




Now I just have to think of a use for this. Suggestions?