Silverbased

In a pair earlier of articles, I showed how to gut a cheapie focus-free 35mm trashcam, and replace its lens with a pinhole.

One rationale for that project was that nowadays, it’s getting harder to buy and develop any film size besides 35mm. Pinhole cameras made for other odd formats are certainly fun, but sometimes require access to a darkroom to make them practical.

But one of the joys of pinhole photography is being able to try out bizarre, idiosyncratic camera designs: Weird-shaped frames, ultra-wide-angle coverage, or warped perspectives from curving the film plane.

The moderately wide coverage of the normal plasticam pinhole is interesting; and its standard 24×36mm frame makes developing the film at any lab easy. Yet compared to more exotic possibilities, it does begin to seem a little tame…

A Japanese woman on Flickr wanted to make a panorama-format pinhole camera. Her inspired idea was to take a plastic Holga, and saw it into pieces. She reused its film-supply and take-up-spool compartments, but replaced the middle section with a homemade “stretch limo” version: A light-tight box with film gate, pinhole and shutter. Genius!

A Holga uses 120 film of course; but she inspired me to consider doing something similar with 35mm film. (Aside from getting interesting widescreen framing, with pinhole cameras a larger format helps give a more detailed image.)

The way I build a 35mm plasti-pinhole, the original shutter is discarded; so it’s not the button on top that takes the picture any more. But the film-winding mechanism remains intact. As you wind, a toothed wheel allows 8 sprocket holes to go past, then locks; this yields the standard-width frame spacing. You still need to click the button on top to release the winding thumbwheel, before you can advance to the next frame.

But you do this independently from making the exposure. And I had an “aha” moment when I realized that if you clicked and wound twice between pictures, that standard mechanism would permit shooting double-width images: 24 x 72 mm!

But how to build the rest of the camera?

Here is my whimsically warped solution: I took two identical plastic trashcams, and sawed through them, exactly at the edges of their film gates. Then I glued and taped them back together “siamese-twin” style, to make a panoramic pinhole camera.

Two focus-free plastic 35mm cameras; $1.40 for the pair at my local thrift store.

A majority of trashy plastic models use curved film gates, to mask the deficiencies of their crummy lenses. But for this purpose, finding two matching cameras with flat film gates makes construction much simpler.

Some plasticams have their own “panorama” mask which you can swing into place. But all those extra parts would add more complications, so I shunned that style too. These two ultra-simple Bell & Howell trashcams turned out to be perfect.

I arbitrarily chose one camera for the supply-compartment half, and the other for the film takeup side. Then I disassembled both cameras and discarded all the unnecessary bits and pieces inside—lenses, shutters, springs, etc. It’s important to remove all stray metal parts before sawing into the camera body!

Discarding useless innards; black lines mark the approximate cut locations

Unlike in my standard plasticam-pinhole, I could not reuse the sliding lens guards as a shutter: The pinhole opening would not be aligned with either camera’s original lens position. So all those moving parts got tossed too.

Next I screwed the shells back onto the camera bodies, wrapped tape around both to hold their backs shut, and sawed through each one.

The crapcam types shown here include dummy weights glued into their bases (to lend an illusion of quality!) It was particularly tricky to avoid grinding the saw blade into those metal chunks—so be careful. An old hand-saw miter box is a great tool for getting a straight, square cut.

I sawed just inside the right edge of one camera’s film gate, and the left edge of the other. This still left some interior partitions standing in the way of the desired pinhole location, all of which needed to be cut away with a sharp knife.

Now, I wish I could say I used some sophisticated assembly technique to combine the two bodies. But really I just spooged the halves together with copious amounts of black silicone sealant—supplemented with much electrical tape. I was trying to fill all gaps where light might leak in, and keep the now-combined film gates as well-aligned as possible.

I also glued an aluminum bar across the two film-door halves, so the back would swing open and latch shut correctly as a single unit again.

A piece of aluminum sheet with an 0.2 mm pinhole went across the front of the camera body. Positioned only 26mm from the film plane, I knew this camera was going to give some wide-angle coverage! (Horizontally, it’s about 110°.) The pinhole size works out to f/128, for those of you keeping track.

For this camera I tried a new shutter idea, a design which has quickly became my absolute favorite. I will definitely be using it again for any future pinhole cameras.

I took a spare cable release I had lying around, and cut away the rotating barrel intended to thread into a shutter button. This uncovers enough extra length of the moving shaft to allow me to hot-glue it to a piece of thick black cardboard. Then the cable sheath is glued to the front of the camera body.

The moving shutter piece is outlined in red here. It has a cut-out which uncovers the pinhole as the cable release is pressed. A couple of scrap pieces glued around the edges guide the moving panel.

What’s wonderful about this design is that the cable-release’s own internal spring snaps the shutter closed again—or, it can be locked open indefinitely with the set-screw of the release. And there’s no jiggling the camera when you open the shutter.

The front shell of the camera needed a matching rectangular opening cut into it. Then finally, I screwed and taped the camera shell back together again. (There’s no particular significance to the metallic tape—it just hides several no-longer-needed openings in the camera’s front panel.)

The block of particle-board contains my usual homebrew tripod socket: A 1/4-20 nut epoxied into a hole in the bottom.

For a while I was jokingly calling this camera the “HaxPan,” in reference to Hasselblad’s multi-thousand-dollar panoramic XPan camera system. Of course, my camera covers a wider angle than even its 30mm lens (as well as saving a few pennies… )

Obviously no ordinary lab will know how to make prints from these crazy non-standard frames. But the negatives can be developed just like any other 35mm, and then scanned on any of the current inexpensive flatbed film scanners for further processing.

Making this camera was truly an experiment. There are still a couple of small light leaks at the joint between the cameras. And next time I would probably do a few things a little differently…

Placing the pinhole so close to the film does give extremely wide views—but you can’t see much detail at the edges, because the light fall-off is so extreme. And a 110° angle of coverage is so hard to visualize without a proper viewfinder that I found framing to be quite hit-or-miss.

So next time, rather than placing the pinhole so far back, I would build up the light-tight inner compartment a little deeper and use a slightly longer focal length.

But that’s the great thing about pinhole cameras: The cost of experimenting is low… and the fun of blazing new ground is priceless.

Happy hacking!

Sample photo from the double-width 35mm pinhole. Note small light leaks at the seam between camera bodies. More samples here.

Silverbased.org is delighted to present our inaugural DIY project: Converting a cheesy focus-free 35mm into a pinhole camera!

Eighty-cent thrift store fodder becomes intriguing creative tool

This installment, Part One, covers choosing and disassembling your plastic camera. The same steps can be used for other hacks besides pinhole conversion (such as flipping the lens, or reaming out the aperture stop). Later, Part Two will cover the pinhole modification.

Why Do This?

In decades past, it seems that every every Scout Troop in the country showed kids how to build pinhole cameras out of a Quaker Oats carton. That is a fun project—and actually, any light-tight container will work. But you only get a single shot; and as fewer and fewer people today have darkroom access, that camera style has become a bit impractical.

Taking a cheap plastic camera and re-using its film transport lets you try pinhole photography, but keep the convenience of roll films—far easier to load and develop.

Hacking a Holga into a “Pinholga” is a popular project. Yet even 120 film can be challenging to locate and get processed in some towns. But 35mm film and developing are still ubiquitous. By gutting a simple 35mm “trashcam,” you can shoot pinhole images of standard frame size and spacing—making developing easy and accessible for anyone.

Choose Wisely

Thrift stores and rummage sales are often awash in unwanted film cameras today. But for pinhole purposes, you need to choose carefully. You don’t want an autofocus point-and-shoot; you don’t want a camera with a zoom lens. You don’t want an Instamatic (the 126 film format is nearly extinct).

You want the most ultra-basic, 100% plastic, 35mm camera on the shelf. The words Made in China are your friend here. Focus Free is good. The camera should have no adjustments whatsoever—even the sunny/cloudy setting of the ubiquitous TIME camera makes things too complicated for us.

The essential feature we desire is a little plastic flap which swings into place to cover the lens. We’re going to remove the original lens and shutter; so we will use this flap instead to begin and end exposures.

Our hacking candidate

Avoid cameras with built-in flash, for two reasons: first, the flash is useless (with a pinhole’s tiny f/stop, it would only expose correctly a few inches from the subject). Secondly, if the capacitor happens to be charged when you take apart the camera, you can get a nasty shock.

If you open the backs of a few cheapie cameras, and you’ll notice many have a slightly bulged film gate. This helps mitigate the optical flaws of their 1-element plastic lens. But a flat film gate usually means the camera has a 2-element lens—whoo, high tech! A bulged gate results in slightly curved lines in pinhole images, so I prefer the flat style—though perhaps it’s a shame to sacrifice the “nicer” crapcams this way…

Many Chinese cheapies use an odd winding mechanism, where the toothed wheel doesn’t pull on the film to advance it; the teeth are actually pushed by the film’s sprocket holes to cock the shutter. Thus, no film—no cocking. If you didn’t know the score, you might even think the camera was broken. But don’t worry, that style will work fine.

Don’t get too hung up finding the perfect camera to hack, or one matching my photo. They all have different minor advantages and annoyances, so just roll with whatever you can find.

Oh—and don’t spend more than a dollar or two. Even as intact, functioning cameras, they’re barely worth that. You may want to bring home a couple of different types, in case you run into a snag with your first one.

Disassembling the Trashcam

You’ll need a fine-tipped Phillips screwdriver to remove the front shell of the camera (here, the silver part).

After disassembling a few of these cameras, you’ll realize there’s a very strong family resemblance between them— they all seem to come from a small number or Chinese factories. It’s easy to adapt these instructions to different designs, just using a bit of common sense.

It’s almost universal for these cameras to be held together with two screws near the film door hinge, and two more inside the film supply compartment. The screws are tiny, and all too easy to lose. Usually all four are the same size; but if yours don’t match, keep track of which went where.

With some trashcam styles, you can remove the front without removing the rewind knob. For others you’ll need to disassemble that too.

The camera pictured has a screw under its flip-up crank. In another common style, it’s between the prongs which engage the film cassette; you unscrew it from inside the film compartment.

The last obstacle to removing the front is often the rewind release button on the bottom of the camera. Click in the button (if you can); you may also need to gently pry the bottom of the shell outwards, to ease it over the button.

Loose Bits

Once you manage to take the front shell off, you might be greeted with a shower of unidentifiable plastic parts flying everywhere. Don’t worry, you haven’t wrecked anything! (But it’s a good idea to work over a towel or a tray, so you don’t lose something vital).

We’re in!

One loose part will be the shutter button. For safe keeping, you can put it back in place in the top of the front shell then tape across it to hold it there.

Also, a couple of lens-cover parts may have fallen out: A pivoting flap and a slider. (The slider has the finger-tab which emerges through the front of the camera.)

The slider often has three click-stop detents: one for closed, one for open, and one which allows it to be pulled out of the lensboard. The flap piece should have a hole which fits on a pivot post, and a peg which engages the slider.

Using my illustrations as a guide, take a moment to understand how the lens-cover parts fit together and operate . For your pinhole camera, this will be the only “shutter,” so it needs to be working properly.

(With a few camera styles, the lens-guard assembly is fastened to the front shell; if so, set the whole thing aside and ignore all this.)

If a wiggly, serpentine piece of plastic falls out, this is a spring which engages the back latch. Examine it and locate the small hook, which mates with a matching hook on the film door. This should help you re-orient it correctly. (Note the camera shown here has a different latch style.)

The last few parts which may come loose are the wrist-strap (eh—who needs it?), and possibly a clear plastic window from the film counter.

If you really do end up with a chaotic mass of stray parts you can’t put back together—don’t despair. Quietly put them into the trash, kiss your dollar goodbye, and start over with a fresh camera.

Lens and Shutter

Set aside your lens-cover parts. We’ve finally reached the tender innards of the trashcam—the lens, lensboard, and shutter. And we’re ready to rip out its heart!

It’s common for the plastic lenses in these cameras to be held in place behind a little retaining ring.

The ears of the ring click under two tabs on the front of the lensboard (arrowed). The ring can be removed by twisting (clockwise for this one) and pulling it forward, letting the lens drop out.

If your camera doesn’t look like this, the lens may be glued into place from the back of the lensboard. (To remove this style of lens may require some violence, like drilling or hammering a nail through it).

Removing the lensboard itself can be tricky: This is an area where the various cheapie camera designs differ quite a lot.

For some, you remove one clearly visible screw, and the lensboard lifts off some pegs. Another common style clips the lensboard in place with four plastic latches around the sides; these need a gentle touch with a narrow tool to pry each loose, so the lensboard can be worked free.

But the style shown here is the one most likely to stump you: besides one plastic latch to the right, it also uses a hidden screw—in a deep recess just below the shutter-button slider (left arrow). Unscrew that, and the lensboard can be pulled free.

We now reveal the original shutter blade, and its spring . Please take a moment to savor its low-tech ridiculousness. A little plastic finger flicks it open; the spring pulls it shut again. And yet somehow it works!

Up until this point, if you so wish, you could re-assemble your camera—restoring its original function in all its plasticky glory. But we’ve reached the crossroads. Next, we will begin trashing parts and carving into plastic.

And for that, we will continue in Part Two….