Pinhole Photography And Cameras

and Different types of cameras and pinholes

Pinhole photography is one of the oldest visual, artistic or photographic disciplines. Starting as a Camera Obscura in antic times, it ended up used later for visualizing the world and tracing of the real world objects for drawings and paintings.

For modern photographers, it's still a fascinating technique/technology that produces different results. Resulting photographs are unique in a number of ways. Unlike lens based technology, pinhole photography is also called lensless and it produces images that are focused at every distance. Everything is in equal focus from the closest object to the infinity. This includes the smallest specs of dust on your filter if you're using one on the pinhole camera.

Pinhole can be attached to a wide array of DIY, interchangeable lens, custom made and large format cameras. For more details on the pinhole cameras on this page (click her

Above: CCB 66 wooden pinhole camera with 0.20mm pinhole

There are several ways to produce pinholes. A very thin sheet of metal is used. The simplest way is to use a needle and sand the hole made with a needle to get a perfectly round hole. It takes a few tries to get a usable hole. Size is hard to control this way.

Considerably more precise and repeatable methods are with precision drilling, laser drilling and photo etching. We're using laser drilling as a middle ground between inferior methods and the most precise photo transfer methods. Repeatability is the same. Inspection under a microscope guarantees consistency and quality. Photo etching method has a potential to produce slightly better quality but it adds significantly to the price and the difference is extremely small.

Above: Hasselblad with 0.35mm pinhole

The resulting quality will depend on the focal length and size of the film or sensor. The quality of the results can be predicted between different focal lengths and cameras. More details on this can be found (here).

Whether you're looking to make a solar can or a bespoke pinhole camera with one or several focal lengths and/or pinholes we can offer a wide range of pinhole cameras and accessories to use them on a wide range of different cameras in following groups (threaded inserts are used on all of these cameras for easy pinhole size changes):

CCB Cameras with custom pinhole cones - CCB 617C, CCB 612C, CCB 45PS, CCB 57PS and CCB 810PS
Lens caps for SLR, Mirrorless and Rangefinder cameras.
Lens caps for medium format cameras
Lens boards for large format cameras
Custom attachments for DIY and custom projects and adaptations.

All of these options can be customized according to the needs.