Pinhole Photography

The Magazine For Photographers
Oct 14
3 min read

What Is Pinhole Photography?

Pinhole photography is basically the most stripped-down form of photography possible. Instead of a lens, you use a tiny hole (literally a pin-sized opening) to let light hit your camera’s sensor (or film of course). It is how cameras started. Before lenses, there were camera obscuras, where photographers would project an image through a small hole onto a wall to then trace it. Modern pinhole photography is that same idea, just in ‘‘modern’’ camera form.

How It Works

When light passes through a super small hole, it projects an inverted image of whatever is in front of it. The smaller the hole, the sharper the image (up to a point of course), the bigger the hole, the blurrier it gets.

The cool thing is that you can make a pinhole camera out of almost anything → an old film camera body, a shoebox, a tin can, or even your digital camera with the lens removed + bit of foil taped over the mount.

How to Make One

If you want to DIY yourself a pinhole camera (out of your normal camera), here is a little instruction manual:

Take a spare camera body cap.
If you have got a DSLR or mirrorless camera, take the body cap (Make sure it is a spare/old one → see next step).
Drill a small hole in the center.
Does not have to be perfect, just enough to let a bit of light through (also keep in mind that you can always make the hole bigger later, making it smaller afterwards is a little more challenging).
Tape foil over the hole and poke a pin through it.
That pinhole becomes your new “lens.” The smaller and cleaner the hole, the better your image will look.
Mount it back on your camera.
And done, you just built yourself a pinhole camera.

If you want to be super old-school, you can go full analog and build one out of a box and film paper, but this digital version is faster to experiment with and gives you better overall results.