Lensless pinhole cameras are easy to make, and can shoot quality photos on sheet or roll film. I built my first pinhole on a whim so that I could take old timey long exposure portraits of friends, and it served as my gateway to the fascinating world of camerabuilding. See my gallery, or my guide to building a pinhole film camera.
Pinhole photography is fun, but it's expensive to develop all that film! I built this camera, which uses a cardboard box and $1 magnifying glass, to shoot on paper sheets coated with photosenstive Potassium Ferricyanide and Ferric Ammonium Citrate. Each sheet costs less than 10 cents to make, and can be developed using water alone!
Homemade pinhole cameras served as my gateway to lensed box cameras like the Kodak Brownie, the first mass-market camera. In 2023, I picked up a couple (one about seventy years old, the other 100) and modified them to take modern film. See my gallery, or my guide to modifying antique cameras for 35mm film.
