Make a Pinhole Panoramic Camera
Tutorial compliments of “Make:” magazine.
Pinhole cameras have been a long-time favorite of adventuresome photographers. But forget the Quaker Oats carton and go wide with this roll-film, panorama design.
It uses standard 120mm roll film, which means you don’t have to open the camera and reload after each exposure, and you don’t need a darkroom to process the results — just take the rolls to a photo lab. Also, it’s built entirely from scratch, rather than hijacking the film-transport from an existing camera.
Figure 1. The top photo demonstrates that the limitless depth of field of a pinhole lets you move as close as you want to your subject, while leaving distant details sharp, making all kinds of playful juxtapositions possible. During the 9-minute exposure that produced the bottom photo, people got up and sat down, unaware that the strange object resting on my table was taking a photograph.
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This article was last modified on July 11, 2023
This article was first published on July 23, 2007
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