Lomography

Smena 8m Pinhole
written by dogma on October 9th, 2009 , 10 comments (8 votes)

Ok lets start. What you will need:

• Some small screwdrivers
• Glue
• Empty bear can
• Needle
• Scrub paper
• Scissors
• New transparent plastic CD case

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Firstly, unscrew the 3 screws located on your Smena 8M lens (Pic #1). When it’s done gently dismount the lens (Pic #2). Push the metal button like it shown in Pic #3 and in same time turn that metal plate counter clockwise then take it off (Pic #4). You will notice that there is still two more metal plate which you have to take off too. For the first one you will need to use a screwdriver (Pic #5) and the second one can be easily be dismounted with the use of your fingers (Pic #6-7). Wow! just have a look what we have here (Pic #8-10) A clock? Camera? Or camera with a pocket clockwork mechanism?

Now the next step is optional, but I already made it. I wanted to protect that mechanism from dust rain and all other things so I made a transparent plastic cover for it. For that you can use an empty CD case. Use the Smena 8M’s lens to draw the needed diameter of the circle (Pic #11) and cut out the cover with a sharp blade or scissors. Use glue to stick it on the camera.

The last step is a pinhole lens, take your beer can and drink it and make sure it’s empty :) then cut it in several pieces. It would be better to colour the inside of the can with black a paint (Pic #12). Take a piece of it and cut out at least 28mm diameter circle (Pic #13). Mark the center and using a needle make small hole in it. The smaller – the better! Make it very careful by twisting needle from one side to another. Take scrub paper and scour a bit around the pinhole. Use scissors and make little cuts on every 3mm on the edge of the circle (Pic #14). And lastly, stick it on the camera and blend all those small wings you have made. It would be good to leave your camera for couple hours with some heavy thing on it, (A jar with tomatoes worked well for me :)) to make sure that everything will stick together really tight).

Voila! the your Smena 8M pinhole is ready shoot!

Specifications:
Focal length: 40 mm
Pinhole diameter: 0.25mm
F stop: 160
Angle of view:47,3m degrees
Sunny day exposure with 100 iso film: 1 sec

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By the way, I used this as reference for my Smena 8M pinhole shooting.