Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

To keep the blog ticking over in this busy period, here’s a draft I’ve had for a while. Enjoy!

So, my weapon of choice (uuum… what’s the term for camera? you know, like an axe is a guitar?… anyway) is a canon 400D (that’s XTi to some). And whilst I love love love it for all it’s worth, I do love my lomography and vignettes. Sooo I once saw this tutorial on how to make your DSLR into a pinhole. Nifty, thought I! So here we go!

Here’s your ingredients

1 DSLR camera (or, a camera with convertable lenses)
1 spare body cap (don’t use the one that you actually use, cos we’re gunna drill holes and shit)
Thin aluminium or thick tin foil

Here’s the tools you’ll need

Coarse sandpaper (try 20 or 40 grade)
Dremel/hand held drill/power drill
Thin needle
black marker
electrical tape (darkest colour you can find)

First things first, you want to sand off the name from the body cap. There’s no real reasoning to this, other than it gives you a nicer flat surface and looks tonnes neater with the finished lens. Use you rough sandpaper, or one of your dremel attachments, then finish with a finer grade.

Then, drill a hole through the very centre of the body cap, quite a small hole is best! On the inside of the body cap, over the top of the hole, stick your thin aluminium/tin foil using the black electrical tape. Through the centre of the hole, and the aluminium, use the finest needle you have to poke a tiny little hole. TADA! You’re done.

pinhole 5 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

Here’re some photos I took using the said pinhole lens, have fun playing with you camera settings for this one! Long shutter speeds and a tripod are most definitely your friends. I also really like the dirt spots, but they also make me feel like a bad camera mother.

pinhole 1 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

pinhole 2 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

pinhole 3 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

pinhole 4 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

6 Responses to Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

Posted by Sam on 11 Dec 2009 at 12:03 pm

those spots are definitely on your camera and not my monitor? Phew!

- Posted by kim on 11 Dec 2009 at 12:03 pm
  
  haha yeah! did you try and wipe your screen?
  
Posted by katie on 11 Dec 2009 at 12:07 pm

That’s pretty cute, i’m going to give it a go!

- Posted by kim on 11 Dec 2009 at 12:14 pm
  
  it’s shockingly simple! I bought a few of the body caps to try some other lens hacks with! I’m going to try a tilt shift one next.
  
Posted by Paul on 11 Dec 2009 at 12:28 pm

Ooo, a tilt-shift hack… that would be ace. Those babies start at £300! Speaking of babies, even Lensbabies are pretty pricey.

- Posted by kim on 11 Dec 2009 at 12:33 pm
  
  yeah, I keep looking at them, but gah, so pricey. I’d prefer to spend on day-to-day lenses and hack the more creative ones!