Beautiful woodwork, tiny little hole

I have been known to mess around with homemade or modified cameras, all in the name of satisfying an urge to indulge in pinhole photography. There is a certain pleasure to be had in building or rehashing something which then draws light through a hole that may be as small as 0.15 mm - and then capturing that light on good old silver halides; kind of thumbing my nose at modern technology.

I've lately been dusting off a mailing tube camera that I made about 12 years ago. As I lack a darkroom, it's been dormant almost since it was born, but I've been making do and occupying the bathroom to produce wet bits of 5x7 paper with ghostly images on them. Yes, the pinhole muse seems to be back, in fine form.

Using different materials than I used to, I've so far just been establishing the right exposure and processing parameters, but I'm getting there. At the weekend, I recorded myself eating lunch on the back verandah. Not a classic photograph, but it's a step on the way.



It looks like I'm sitting by a rounded corner, but this is an artefact of the curved film-plane and the position of the pinhole. One of the reasons I like pinhole is that it gives you the ability to create images that can't be made with a conventional camera with a flat focal plane. Coming later will be a different curved-plane camera, one with less disturbing image geometry.

Such geometry can be found in images produced by the Pinoramic 120.


This is a panoramic camera handcrafted - with other similar models - by Kurt Mottweiler. They combine the delightful wacky world of analogue pinhole photography with woodworking and design skills of the highest order. When I have bolstered the bank account back up to a healthy level, I shall acquire one - either that, or chew off one of my hands with insane frustration...