How to Make a Pin Hole Camera With an LCD

Make a fun pinhole camera from a LCD digital SLR camera.

Making a pinhole camera from your LCD digital SLR camera is educational and fun. It also demonstrates the basic functioning of a camera and what working with the first invented cameras was like. You can make different sized inserts, use different exposures and set the camera at different angles to get different pin hole effects. Generally, the smaller the hole you use, the sharper the image you get. However, using a smaller hole requires a long exposure time.

Things You'll Need

• 1 Plastic camera cap
• 1 Drill
• 1 Drill bit
• Hammer
• Nail
• Aluminum tape
• Aluminum food plate
• Scissors
• Pin
• SLR digital camera

Instructions

1. Drill a hole in the digital camera's body cap. Use the smallest drill bit available, although the size of the hole does not really matter. If you don't have a drill you can hammer a large nail into the plastic cap to make a hole.

2. Stick aluminum foil sticky tape to the inside of the camera cap. Aluminum foil from food containers can also be used. However you will need to cut the container to size and glue the aluminum piece to the inside of the cap.

3. Make a small hole in the aluminum foil through the hole in the camera cap. This is the real pinhole you will use.

4. Remove the lens from the SLR digital camera and replace with the cap. The small hole is your camera lens.

5. Try the same process followed in Steps 1 through 4 with a point-and-shoot digital camera, if it has a lens cap. However, you won't get the same results because you can't remove the lens.

6. Set the camera on a tripod, because you will need to shoot at long shutter speeds. Set the digital camera to its manual settings. Start by shooting at a one-second exposure and continually move the exposure up. You will want to experiment and look at your results through the digital LCD viewer.

Tips & Warnings

• Before starting your project, you should purchase an additional camera cap, so you can continue to protect your SLR digital camera afterward.

References

• PC World: Make a Pin Hole Camera from a Digital Camera