Pinhole Photography - Further Information

On this page we have included other links and helpful/useful items that you may be interested in taking a look at.

We have a number of articles on the Pinhole Camera including:-

• Pinhole cameras

• A pinhole for your DSLR

• Using a pinhole to Get a zoom/wide angle effect 

• Using a pinhole to simulate the rising front on a camera

• Pringle tube pinhole camera  

• Pinhole Adaptor

• Pinhole kit Mk3  

• Pinholes from the pinhole factory

It would be quite easy to produce a very long list by extracting links from others and search engines, but we have not done this, choosing instead to point you in the direction of the most useful, some of which do have far longer links lists.

Remember that pinhole photography is always softer than photography with lenses and anything you read should be the starting point for your own experimentation. There are a number of tables and calculators that try to suggest pinhole size, this is not at all critical, other than generally smaller is better. I have found smaller holes to those recommended worked best, but its probably because I am using a small sensor not a sheet of film.

Books

We have a selection of books on this topic here. If you can't find what you are looking for here then visit our online bookshop.

Website Links

The following website links provide more background information.

Wikipedia covers them on two pages:-

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera has the basic information,

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera_model gives a more mathematical or scientific explanation

home.online.no/~gjon/pinhole_rome.htm gives example images taken with a 35mm camera using a pinhole in a body cap.

Something worth reading. A very long article covering the history, optimum designs and more can be found at home.online.no/~gjon/pinhole.htm.  It also has a  very large number of links to other pages on the internet on pinhole photography.

Kodak has a  project to make a pinhole camera at www.kodak.com 

 www.mrpinhole.com/ - A website that contains a number of calculators on line, and suggesting the optimum design for a pinhole camera. I experimented with using some of this, it tends to suggest pinholes larger than I was using, but these, when I experimented with them, produced less clear images. It may be that these calculators cannot be used separately and that you need to construct a medium format camera to use them, rather than using them in combination with a DSLR.

Pinhole photography ring at www.ringsurf.com/ring/pinholephotography/

World Pinhole Day

Each year there is a World Pinhole Day where Pinhole photographers are invited to take a picture with a pinhole camera during the 24 hours on that day. It is on the last Sunday of April each year. Currently they have past years photos online in galleries from 2001.  They also have an extended links page with many pinhole related links at www.pinholeday.org/support/,  this also contains links to a number of commercial sites selling parts or kits to create pinhole cameras.

Other Services

Commercially Produced Pinholes

www.lenoxlaser.com   USA based.

• Laser drilled pinholes for many various models and types, including DSLR caps with lens in. Example Nikon D with pinhole 240 microns is $33, postage to the UK $27.

• 1 micron = 0.001mm so 240 = 0.24mm

www.pinholesolutions.co.uk   UK based.  They have a number of options available including (prices include postage):-

• You send them your body cap, they add a 0.3mm pinhole lens and return it together with an exposure calculator for £30.

• Pinhole Lens Adapter, made from black anodised metal fitted with a double etched 0.3mm Pinhole Lens. This adapter will fit any film or digital SLR camera with a T2 mount and gives a focal length equivalent to a 35mm wide-angle lens for film cameras (and they say a 50mm for a digital SLR camera, but this will adjust the equivalent camera angle).  It has a working aperture of about f/180 cost is £30, a T2 mount is available for £10.  Covered in article Pinhole Adaptor.

• They supply pinholes in a 1cm disk with holes 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5mm for £12 each,  covered in article Pinholes from the pinhole factory and used in the Pinhole kit Mk3  

• Silver shim blanks to produce your own at £6.

Perspective Control Lenses (PC lenses)

Explanation of perspective and perspective control in Making Buildings Stand Up Straight.

Using a pinhole to simulate the rising front on a camera

Pinhole Kit Mk3   effect shown in images in Using a pinhole to Get a zoom/wide angle effect 

Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_correction_lens