Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera
Posted by kim on December 11th, 2009
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.

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.








