It is said that the Olympus XA2 is usually called the poor man's LCA. So I call my experiment camera here as poor man's Horizon. the angle of view is around 115 degrees, but you can make it wider of course!
Upon doing this experiment, these links served as my inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/groups/matchboxpinhole/ , http://hila.webcentre.ca/projects/pancamera/ and figure 4 from this link.
Making your own pihnhole is quite easy. The instructions are almost similar to this except that you will use film box instead of matchbox and you have to curve the film inside it. Also, you’d want to reverse the film emulsion (redscale it) to make the winding smoother and the camera’s appearance will also look good.
In curving the film, you need to find a plastic bottle seen in picture #1 with a diameter around 45-50 mm then cut it vertically into half with 36.5 mm height (to fit it inside the film box – pic #2), lets call it part A. Cut two more with 5mm height each – pic #3, then attach both on the top and bottom of part A (you can use a transparent tape). It will be strong enough to hold the film. Make sure your film can easily slide through it – pic #4. Now attach part A to the inside of the box, and you are done!
Remember that the pinhole diameter should be 0.25mm with perfect round. as the f stop will be 140, please use exposure guide in pic #5 (sunny 16 rule).
*Note: This camera needs many improvements so please feel free to give suggestions or develop a better one and share it!
15 comments
mattcharnock
thats so woerd i just made an almost exact same version of this camera! (i thought i was being origional - lol! (your shots are way better than mine!)
dogma
nice work! :)
halfawakehaiku
this is way awesome.
yoscolmi
wow! i have to try this! the results are awesome!
stouf
Excellent ! And the results are impressively good !!!
rater
Excellent job, this is a great DIY!
adi_totp
woooooow .. wooooooww...
nerdcist
@ LSI and all: thanks.
I think my explanation is not so clear, so if you have any questions fell free to contact me
-a-l-b-e-r-t-o-
great great great
ahleng90
FANTASTIC!
a lower cost horizaon camera...and its home made :D
thanks 4 sharing this!
luv it!
vicuna
great tipster, I must try it!! awesome shots! :)
nerdcist
this is frequently asked. to avoid overlapping or to much gap between frames, try to listen and count for 19 clicks when winding (the result is a 7mm gap between frames). but it could be different with your camera, it depends on the diameter of plastic bottle you are using. to make sure, try to count how many sprocket holes are there inside the box, just before lightproofing the camera, and use that number for winding. as you can see in pic #4, there are approximately 18 sprocket holes in the curved plane so I add 1 more to make it 19 to be safe. good luck with your pinhole camera :)
floriansimon
Very, very nice tutorial. I definitely have to try this out.
Is this Hiroshima on picture #3?
eugenia
very nice! ♥
micheal
Very very nice. I may try this.