Some thoughts stirred by Thoughts on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

I just watched Joe Van Cleave's YouTube video "Thoughts on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day" which he recorded last year (using a pinhole!). It isn't quite right to say this post was provoked or inspired by it, but it did start ideas swirling in my head.  Joe's video covers his general feelings about pinhole photography,  his particular practice of it, and with pinhole as a movement, particularly as it exists on the internet. I am impressed by his ability to do this on camera.  Nobody wants to watch me stumble for words and constantly interrupt and correct myself.  Although I can do it live if I practice enough.

Joe discusses the impact Tom Persinger's f295 forum had on him. The internet also had a big impact on my practice of pinhole photography. Tom created f295 as a replacement for Gregg Kemp's Pinhole Vision discussion forum which had pretty much the same format, which Gregg discontinued during his first bout with cancer in 2004. (I was the first post on f295!) Even before the Worldwide Web,  Gregg created the pinhole photography email discussion list, although that was pretty much limited to verbal discussion and not sharing of images. I have to say the feeling of community was strongest on that email forum. Evidence for that is that Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day was organized by members in about six weeks after Zernike Au's offhand remark about a day for pinholers. (more about WPPD below).  By the way, Gregg was also pivotal in creating Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.  We still use essentially the same code he wrote.

I had been doing pinhole photography sporadically since the 80's, starting with a workshop given by Ruth Thorne-Thomsen and later had spurts when I got involved in a Science Outreach grant project using pinhole photography as an example of chemical and physical concepts, and then doing a summer class for fourth through seventh graders for several years. 

But what really kept me doing it regularly and long- term was the ability to share my pictures and talk about them with other people around the world on the internet. It still gives me chills when I respond to someone on the other side of the world and they respond back seconds later.

In his video Joe talks about how this changed his practice of pinhole as he strived to impress the community on f295 rather than just to play with pinhole for his own satisfaction.  I can't say I can separate those two things.  I play with pinhole to amuse myself, but I've also have always had kind of an attitude of "let's try to freak the audience out."  I occasionally say things just to be provocative. The measure of whether this is what keeps me going is the relative lack of discussion on Social Media today. I've been doing this blog for two and half years and after 128 posts, I've gotten a total of 69 comments, including my own responses.  If I was doing this just for the audience response, I think I might have lost interest. I've described my motivation in the past as more like an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I announce posts of Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, and I think I get more comments on Facebook than I do directly on the blog, which sort of irritates me because then they're disconnected from the post after a few days.  But they do constitute evidence that an audience is out there and seeing the work they post in those venues does let me at least imagine what the discussion would be like if there was one.

I do obsessively check my stats on the blog for what that's worth.

I see all this blogging and social media as a structure for me to keep exploring.

Joe opines that pinhole photography has been the latest trendy gimmick and that the worldwide short-attention-span is starting to fade. I agree a little. My brief involvement with the commercial end was almost a decade ago, but I still see new products being introduced, so it's been a fairly long fad as far as the internet goes.

In one way,  good riddance.  I've mentioned earlier my impatience with one-time experiences with pinhole which from my workshop presenter's point of view seem to be just technical demonstrations that it works.  I'd really like to get together a mature group that really wanted to explore and make great photographs. However, my own personal fascination with pinhole starts with the magical impression of seeing an image come out of that empty box with a tiny hole in the end, and even in a limited event, it's fun to give people that experience.

Joe's discussion of Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day reminds me of Ed McMahon's (look him up, kids) assessment of New Year's Eve - it's when the amateur drinkers come out so the real practitioners prefer to avoid it.  I have to be careful here because I'm the team coordinator.  I agree that one of the faults of Pinhole Day is that for many participants, it's the only time they do any pinhole photography. This was really a problem for Gregg, especially because it often involved just purchasing a DSLR body cap with a pinhole (although he had a renewed enthusiasm just before he died in 2016). I understand that objection, but I'm OK with it. As in the previous paragraph, just experiencing something so basic about image-making, even if just this once, is worthwhile, although it is sort of like wading in up to your knees and calling it swimming.

A lot of people organize groups, events, and school projects which they might not do if it were not for a holiday to associate it with.  All of these are good things in my book.  As noted before, commiserating with like-minded people is a positive experience for most people.

Especially dear are those school groups.  Joe brings up one perception about pinhole photography is that it's viewed as some sort of children's activity. I also hate hearing it compartmentalized like that, but it's also kind of neat to hear about kids having what I think is a significant educational experience.  It's a hands on demonstration of lots of physical science, as in my grant project mentioned above, but meets lots of other objectives, most notably that you can make something with your own hands and create pictures with it in a dark closet.  It also can be extended to re-experience what earlier generations experienced of photography with the long exposures and processing of a light sensitive surface (My major as an education undergraduate was History).

And I'm a big fan of the fact that we're all one species wherever we are.

I've blogged about it before, but personally I really like the challenge of having to get a really great picture on that one day, whatever the conditions, and being required to pick the best one, and then sharing that with the world.

Joe also talks in the video about the role of digital tools, and follow-through to a print that are rumbling around in my cerebrum, and I'll have to address them in a future post.

My pinhole day.

I have been having such fun lately with the Evil Cube that I decided to continue with it for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, with a few insurance exposures with The Populist. My general impression is that I did a lot of nice safe academic compositions.

My first shot in the morning. I had noticed this backlit leaf the day before and I knew the weather (ergo lighting) was going to be about the same on Pinhole Day.

The weather was cold, rainy, windy and dark, but you take what you get so I ventured outside.  I took a picture of this gazing ball at dawn one year on pinhole day, but it was a little later in the morning this year.

I had to go through the back porch to get outside and noticed these pansies waiting for the weather to be decent enough to plant them.

I knew I could trust the ceramic bunnies to hold still in the wind and I'm surprised that being on the screened porch was protection enough that the fern held still as well.

Spenser's passage. I thought I was being really careful about making sure the film was tight, but looks like it was warped a little.

A display of fruit on the kitchen table.

You'd think after all that time and film expended up there, I would have avoided the upstairs all together.

On a dark day, if it makes sense to work near the window, you might as well just photograph the window itself. Justin has been promoting the slogan "Action against refraction," but maybe there's some chance you can work with it without compromising pinholiness.  The beveled glass in the front door window. Not an oriel window, but as close as I could get.

You can also modify the light coming in with variably translucent materials.

I was trying to avoid really long exposures so I could keep shooting, but since I wasn't using the Populist as my primary instrument, I used it to get this two hour exposure in the garage attic for insurance.

As long as I was out there retrieving it, I picked up a quick one in the garden.

I've already blogged about my stereo solargraph attempt, and as I predicted, it turned out not to be my submission to the WPPD gallery.

The image I eventually chose to submit was from the middle of the day in the garden, a tulip coming up through a rose bush.

I mean it's really sharp (ha, ha). It is notable that this tulip was braced by the fairly rigid rose bush so that it didn't flutter in the wind.  Here's another example of the illusion of shallow depth of field. There were several pretty stiff gusts during the 20 second exposure. (Kodak Portra 400) The globe flowers in the background fluttered quite a bit rendering them more softly and looking for all the world like it was done with a large aperture.  Sarah thought it looked a little like a bird attempting to take flight. I guess I saw some sort of metaphor for the struggle for existence.

A couple additional notes.

Sarah did an incredible job with the Chaneloflex.  We added pearl viewfinders to it for this year. Here's her submission.  

Sorry, Justin, more toying around with refraction. Does this make it an animalmorphic lens?

I think I win the pinholiness award because I took the picture of the Evil Cube to accompany my submission with the Populist.  Anybody else take their camera picture with a pinhole camera?

And lastly, from the Populist mounted on yet another tripod, what our living room looked like the morning after. I used all five tripods at some point in the day.

An attempt at stereo solargraphy.

June 2019. When my university retiree account disappeared with a new change in policy, the pictures I uploaded to this blog while logged into that account disappeared. I'm working on fixing that but it's going to be at least a summer long project. 

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.  I just screwed it up a little.

I put the camera out on January 1st, and closed the shutters after sundown on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.  It's probably not going to be my Pinhole Day submission.  I just picked up my film and it looks like I've got lots of other choices.

It's set up for crossed-eyed viewing. (How to view crossed-eye stereo images)

I guess it's OK in 3D.  What I screwed up was that the paper in the right hand chamber (the left as set-up for crossed eyes) was a little big on one side and warped, so the sun trails don't follow their normal curve.

I was hoping I could tell that the sun was farther away than the trees, but since it seems to have overexposed through the skinny tree branches, and the aforementioned distortion, it kind of screws up any 3D illusion. The rest isn't bad.  The negative density is a little low contrast, about what I'd expect for 4 months in winter

The camera's a one pound 45mm Oaks candy box with two .3mm pinholes, so two about 4 x 4 inch images. There's a piece of black foam core taped to the top and bottom that's dividing the chambers.

It was mounted on the side of the garage underneath the roof overhang so except for the windiest storms it would stay dry and that seems to have worked.

What did surprise me is I've always thought of myself as pretty far north, but really I'm just slightly south of halfway between the equator and North Pole.  I was surprised that the overhang cast a shadow on the camera this early in the year, so no more sun trails.

The other surprise was that the sun trails were kind of slanted to one side.  This wall faces absolutely south, but if you've seen a noon analema, it's always tilted. I think the equation of time explains this, but I really don't know.

In August when the noon sun falls on the camera again, I might do it for another couple months.  I'll be careful to make sure the film plane is flat this time. Will the sun trails be slanted in the other direction after the summer solstice?

It will be interesting to see the difference from the leafless snow scene and the fully leafed out trees and garden..

All sixteen Pinhole Days

You may know that Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day resulted from a post on Gregg Kemp’s Pinhole Visions email discussion list (which by the way had a feeling of community that I don’t think exists much on the Internet these days). Zernike Au, who makes Zero Imaging Pinhole cameras, somewhat off-topically wished everyone a happy Valentine’s Day and then mused that it would be cool if there was a day for pinholers all over the world. It resonated with the group, and a small band led by Gregg immediately cooked up a plan which came to fruition less than three months later on what has become its traditional day, the last Sunday in April. Tom Miller is the only one still involved from that original group. We have kept the event going for 17 years now, although there were some close calls, most notably losing Gregg last year. I have to give a shout-out to my son Andy, who, when Gregg was trying to get someone to continue maintaining the site, volunteered without me even knowing about it.

That pinhole-day-idea thread came in on a Wednesday, and I remember following it in my office, but other than contributing a few comments, I wasn’t involved in that extraordinary development effort.

I did submit an image in that first event, and have submitted an image every year since. I tried to explain why last year

I don’t remember much about that first day, except for the image I eventually submitted. It was a sunny morning and I was soaking in a hot bath. I noticed the sun casting the pattern of the lace curtains and was struck that light traveling in straight lines casting shadows was really the essence of pinhole, and the fact that it was casting them on my eyeglasses was an ironic detail on a day dedicated to lenslessness.  I immediately jumped out of the bath like Archimedes and ran down two floors to grab a camera and tripod desperate to get the shot before the sun moved away. Except for the fact that I wish I would have pointed slightly down, it turned out exactly as I envisioned it. The camera was a 4x5 format, six inch, single shot foam core box that was my main camera at the time, using Ilford Multigrade IV.

The second year was a miserable, cold, rainy day. Since the defining characteristic of Pinhole Day is that all the photographs are taken on the same day all over the world, I think it’s interesting to see the different conditions participants have to work with, and thought that was captured by the raindrops on the handlebars of my bicycle, again using my six inch camera with Multigrade IV.

In 2003 my bathtub was again featured in my submission, but I don’t think I was in it at the time. I am just a fool for a sunbeam, this time using a 4x5 three inch camera on Multigrade IV.

2004 was the first year I was involved on the team. The previous fall, Tom Miller had invited me to talk about my photographs at an event at the Minnesota Center for Photography (for which I went totally overboard), and in conversation I asked if there was anything I could do to help with WPPD. Later Tom asked me to help work on the publicity efforts in the U.S. This was well before Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  I remember doing what was probably a Yahoo search for photography clubs, and sent the press release to as many as I could find email addresses for.

When I got up on Pinhole Day and looked out the window to see what the weather was like, the first thing I saw were these emerging tulips covered in raindrops.  This time I used my 4x5, 10 inch single shot foam core camera, once again with the black and white paper.

The following year, 2005, I was asked to be part of the coordinating team. I had the choice to be either events or support coordinator.  Since I had written a manual for teachers to use pinhole to teach general science and my day job was essentially to help people use computers, I figured support was the best role for me.

I decided to get adventurous that year and packed up several single shot 4x5 cameras and my changing bag and went to Menomonie Park. My original objective was the large stone globe (worldwide, ya know), but walking around the park, I came upon this classic s-curve composition where the little railroad ride passes through the pines with the sunshine filtering through the branches that I remembered seeing often when I used to run through the park. It looks like the image was toned, but I don’t remember if I did that intentionally or just happened to leave the scanner on color. 4x5 photo paper again, again in the three inch camera.

I had been getting a little frustrated with the limited latitude of photographic paper for awhile, and sometime in early 2006, Earl Johnson posted on f295 about a simple jig to hold four sheets of film at a time for tray processing. I made one and jumped on eBay and bought some 2¼ x 3¼ film holders, ordered a box of Arista.edu 400  and built a very simple 60mm foam core box using rubber bands to hold the film holders on. I took the image I submitted right at the end of Pinhole Day, when I went into the kitchen to get a beer and thought the light above the sink in the otherwise dark room made a nice composition.

2007 saw the introduction of the Populist and my new infatuation with color, and when Pinhole Day came around, I had just built the 120 Populist, and thought the larger format would be special for the holiday.  I must have done a lousy job with the rest of the roll, because my submission was this crabby looking self-portrait,  easily my least favorite submission to the Pinhole Day gallery. I reloaded with black and white film later in the day, but got impatient to submit before I finished and developed that roll, and missed out on submitting one of my favorite pinhole pictures ever.

My son's Master's recital took place in late April in 2008, and Sarah and I were in Boston for Pinhole Day. We got up Sunday morning and took the T out to the Arnold Arboretum.  It was still a little early in the Spring, but there were already a few trees flowering, and luckily a nice reflecting pond to fill the foreground since I just had my little table-top tripod on the ground to support The Populist.

It was cold and wet again in 2009, and this red maple leaf which had wintered under the snow, shifted to magenta by reflecting the sky caught my eye, again with The Populist.

Since Pinhole Day is a holiday, I like to mix it up and do something a little different.  I built the Pre-Populist in the beginnings of my adventures in 35mm in 2006 and hauled it out again for Pinhole Day in 2010.  This image has always reminded me of a painting by Degas.

In 2011, I used both the Populist and Pre-Populist, but my submission was again from the wider format camera, and as in the year before, portrayed me reviewing submissions to the WPPD gallery, this time just after washing my hair.

In 2012 I pulled out the Glenlivet Vertical Populist which I hadn't used since 2009 when I built it, and recreated the black and white image I hadn't waited for in 2007.

For 2013, I pulled out my first 35mm camera which had been such a transformative experience, and although I swore I wasn't going to take a self-portrait reviewing submissions, toward the end of the day I got a little desperate for material and it turned out to be my favorite of the day.

Another dark, cold, windy, rainy day for 2014, and I captured Sarah bundled up on the couch. I used the Nickon, my second 35mm camera. I put a new shutter on it for this occasion.

I spent most of the winter of 2014/2015 building special cameras for Sarah and I to use for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day which I didn't test ahead of time which both turned out to have some serious light leaks, fatal in the case of Sarah's camera.  I had better luck and got this one shot at Mosquito Hill with the Glenmorangie Evil Cube.

And finally last year I dragged out the more trusty Glenlivet Vertical Populist and went back to Menonomie Park. It was the first Pinhole Day I got to blog about.

I have some ideas what I'm going to do this year, but I've got a few weeks yet to think about it.

It's April 30th. Are you ready?

Studies in black and white.

One result of all this camera making lately is I feel the need to run film through them and actually try to experience what it's like to use them.  This is how I learned about using two layers for the shutter to make it stiffer, and not to trust the template print and card stock to be totally opaque.

But, I've always been the kind of person that can't just fire off a roll of film without wanting to get the best pictures I could, and I'm also a little impatient to see the results, so I find myself in the not unpleasant situation of approaching the task as a student of basic black and white photography again. And I'm not unpleased with the results.

You never know what you're going to find at the farmers market.  I've been finding myself calling to vegetables a lot lately, and it looks like they're responding. Obviously one way to study something is to emulate the classic genres. According to his Daybooks (which come to think of it I emulate a little in this blog), before he took the famous funnel photograph, Weston held on to that pepper and kept photographing it for a week until it almost withered. I still haven't had the nerve to cook these two entwined carrots, but the other two have already been in the other kind of soup.  

Here are the cameras I've been talking about. Obviously the camera that took this picture is not in the image. It's a little different and there will be another post about that camera eventually

The one on the left is The 10-year-old Populist.

The 60mm black one on the bottom right is what I used to take the snowy day pictures and the test with 6 different pinholes - note how the black top layer of the paper on the front has torn away by taping all those pinholes to it.  It's also got the single-thickness middle layer shutter which is too easily bendable. The one on the left on the bottom is a 45mm which I discovered needed more light-proofing when I tested it with a strip of paper.  The 60mm one on the top, made out of the same Cheerios box card stock, I just finished a roll in, and the three coats of paint seem sufficiently opaque, but I haven't scanned the negatives yet. 

One thing interesting about photography mentioned by Henry Talbot in The Pencil of Nature is how the same Bust of Patroclus can look different when illuminated with different angles and qualities of light.  Here's the corner of the sun room in the afternoon.

And just after dawn in the morning.

Looking for a new angle is sometimes all you need. I've done a million pictures of the dining room from the kitchen door and from the living room, but I don't think I've ever put the camera on top the piano.  This was just before sunset.

Taking advantage of the weather is a strategy. We had one extremely foggy day, but it was also misting pretty heavily.  Not the weather you want to expose a paper camera to but there are ways around that.  Our magnolia after it was ratted on by a neighbor for blocking their view from backing out the driveway (funny it never blocked my view) and was forcibly pruned by the city.

A classic genre for me is the sun coming in the south kitchen window.

The 7th hole on the yellow disk golf course at the Winnebago County Park. The sun is only maybe 15 degrees above the top and shining straight onto the camera with no flare. This is the first pinhole I've ever tarnished with Liver of Sulfur. I only had a little lump, but I've bought more and look forward to experimenting with it.

All with Arista.edu 100 developed in Caffenol with a .28mm pinhole 45mm from a 6x6cm frame.

10th Anniversary edition Populist plans

This post has been significantly revised and updated in summer of 2019. 

In winter of 2006 and 2007 I developed what I thought was a camera everyone can make. Photography has changed a lot since then and some once simple things, like getting your hands on an empty 35mm cassette or 120 reel, have gotten a little more difficult, and analog photography has gotten to be even more of a niche category, and requires a more committed practitioner. So now it's a camera most people can probably make. 

I've updated the templates for 35mm and 120 cameras and I think made improvements in function, particularly with the shutter, as well as eliminating the need for opaque photographic tape. (Although that makes a terrific outer covering of the finished camera).

This link leads to new templates for a 6x6cm camera in 45mm and 60mm lengths, as well as the old 24x36mm, 24mm. and 6x9cm, 60mm cameras.  By changing the lengths of the sides of the camera, you can modify these to any distance to the pinhole you'd like.

They take a hair more care to make than the original, but not that much.

I've recently seen commenters on the Facebook group "Hand-made film camera," when looking at some precision rare-wood and brass beauty, wish they had the skills to make their own camera, and to be honest, a significant array of woodworking and machining tools, and a dedicated place to use them. I don't have any of those nor the skills to use them and I do all this on my kitchen table, but what I do have is some limited experience making paper models and years of experience as a graphic artist when an Xacto knife was the tool in your hand more than anything else, so that is where this concept comes from.

I don't know if there's really any need for another plan for a do-it-yourself pinhole camera on the internet, but I'm going to write the rest of this as though you were going to make one. If you are building one, be sure to look over this whole post before starting.

The template

Measuring precisely to cut and fold pieces is extremely tedious and error prone, so the idea is to print a template on paper, glue it to some appropriate card stock, cut the pieces out, fold them and glue them together.

Make sure your PDF reader is printing at 100% or full size and not "fit to page" or things won't fit. I've set the file to print that way, but some readers (cough, Chrome, cough) don't recognize that setting. I've put a 1 inch and 25mm scale on them so you can check. The pages are US letter sized, but the prints should fit on A4 paper.

You'll need foldable card stock of some sort. Cereal boxes (for 120 one and a half or two giant family size depending on the pinhole distance, for 35mm one regular cereal box is enough) or 24 packs of beverages in aluminum cans are good and often colorful sources. 

Glossy printed surfaces need to be roughed up in order to give the glue something to grab on to. If you're pasting the template on the printed side (the inside of the camera), sandpaper is an effective way to prepare it.  If you're using the printing on the outside, you can be more precise roughening areas that get glued with the tip of your exacto knife.

I've made the parts of the template that will be glued light grey so there's plain paper between the dots. (I forgot a couple places with the copy I used for this build so they're sanded instead.)

Not all combinations of your computer print and the box are necessarily going to be light proof, so if you're not interested in playing with the printing on the card stock, material usually referred to as poster board in arts & craft stores, in black, is the premium material. Remember that it has to fold so something like matte board isn't going to work. If you're not completely convinced your print and card stock is completely opaque, you can paint the interior with three or so coats of matte black paint, and I've included another option if you can't do that.

I use Aleens tacky glue, but almost any white glue for paper or wood will work. For gluing the template to the card stock, permanent spray adhesive is quick and gives a quick bond, but it's messy, and you're going to need the white glue anyway to put the camera together. Permanent glue sticks are alright for glueing the template to the card, but I'd avoid using it to glue the parts together - the resulting joint isn't flexible and parts tend to pop off. Whatever glue you're using, let it dry completely before continuing. Overnight is best. Patience is a virtue we can learn from pinhole, and one you'll need taking pictures.

The template, in most cases, is intended to be the inside of the camera.

If you're using white glue, spread it with your finger and make sure it's covered very thinly and completely covering the surface. Too much glue will get the paper wet. 

Keep a damp paper towel around to wipe off excess glue. Clean your finger with a wet paper towel immediately.

Squeegee the template down with a credit card or something. The template has to be completely attached to the card stock all the way to the edges or your camera is liable to peel apart at some unfortunately timed point. Make sure you wait until it is completely dry to continue - wet paper doesn't cut very well. If you do notice something separating later on, just stick a drop of glue between the layers, smooth them back together and let it dry a few minutes.

A couple parts, specifically the middle layer of the shutter, need to be stiffer so you need to laminate two layers of your card stock together to make those parts. I also like viewfinders, winder collars, and the winder minder to be double weight.

Glued cardstock tends to warp when drying, and that's liable to create gaps, so when gluing the two layers together and when gluing the template on, dry them under some kind of weight to keep them completely flat.

Cutting and folding the template

Most of the cutting out of the template once it's glued to the card stock can be done with a good pair of scissors. Obviously it's important to cut accurately. The holes for the tripod mount, winders, shutters, film counter, pinhole, and maybe the thumb grips need to be done with a craft knife like an Xacto. You'll also need some kind of cutting mat. Don't push too hard or you'll break the tip, let the knife's sharpness do the cutting.  Better several light strokes. Probably more accurate, too. Buy extra blades and change it whenever you break the tip or start feeling it getting hard to cut. You probably shouldn't need more than three blades and I've actually done it with one.


The holes for the winders should be cut a little on the small side and then use the dowels for the winders to enlarge them so they fit very tightly. Those holes are an opportunity for light leaks. Always be paranoid about light leaks. The sun is a vengeful benefactor. For the winder collars, cut those holes with a bit of the cardboard matrix around them, and then cut out the collar itself with a scissor.

Score all the folds with a ball point pen against a straight edge. When you do fold them, crease the fold all the way in both directions so the card isn't trying to straighten itself back out. Make sure the folds are square.

The camera body

Start with the image chamber box. Cut out the openings for the pinhole and tripod mount, and the dotted lines.

Fold the box with the flaps adhered from the side.

One of the main differences with the older versions of the Populist is that the boxes are held together with glued flaps instead of opaque photographic tape. With the inner box, the flaps should go on the inside and with the outer box the flaps go on the outside so you have a smooth continuous surface where they slide together (light leaks, ya know).

The image chamber box and the inner box are glued together in series of steps. (These photos were done with an earlier version of the image chamber, but the method is the same.)

First, apply glue to the bottom flaps of the image chamber box and attach it to the bottom of the inner box. Make sure it's aligned with the vertical lines on the front of the front that define the image chamber, and the tripod mount hole is lined up.

Then apply glue to the top of the image chamber box. If you run a bead of glue on the front of the image chamber box as well, it will make for a stronger box if those are glued to the front.

Fold the front of the camera over, and checking that it's aligned with the image chamber lines on the front,  glue and clamp them together.

Then one side at a time, glue the sides of the front and clamp them. Make sure the flaps meet in the middle and are aligned.

Wait for all this to dry.

Fold the film reel spacers that hold the film up near the back of the camera and place them in the film bays. You really don't even need to glue them. (There are none in the 35mm film camera.)

In order to make sure the outside box fits tightly - ergo light doesn't sneak between the two - you have to glue the outside box while it's wrapped around the inside box. Make sure you have it fitting as tightly as possible. In order to make sure the two don't get glued together by some stray glue squeezing out, put a bit of wax paper between them, folded as neatly as possible so it doesn't create a gap.

Fold the outer box over it, turn it over and glue the flaps, which this time go on the outside.

The flaps won't come together like they do in the front, but try to make them square. The back should fit as tightly over the front as it can. Then clamp them with rubber bands.

When you take them apart after the glue is dried, you may find bits of the wax paper will have stuck that you'll have to peel off.

The two boxes should be a little hard to get apart.  The thumb holes should make it a little easier to get a grip on the inside box.

The tripod mount

There are two possible ways to make the tripod mount, with a T-Nut or a square nut. Tripod screws are universally 1/4 by 20 threads.  I think the threads are referred to as 1/4"-20 BSW (British Standard Whitworth) thread outside the US.

I'm using the T nut with the shortest shaft which is I think is 1/4" (6mm?). 

For the T-Nut there are three layers. For the bottom layer of the tripod mount, I use 3/16 (5mm) foam core that you can drive the prongs into. It doesn't need to be black foam core since it will be covered. The second layer is a spacer to accommodate the top of the nut, and the top layer holds it down so the tripod screw doesn't just push it up into the camera.

Here are the four parts of the T nut tripod mount.

The shaft of the T-Nut should protrude a little through the bottom of the camera.

If you can't get a T-Nut and foam core, you can use a square nut. Use the template to cut 7 or 8 layers of your card stock to make the thickness of the nut. Make sure to cut them all and the holes before you glue them together, because you're not getting through that stack with an Xacto knife. Put the nut in the holes when you glue them together.

Notice the hole is not in the center. The wider side is toward the front of the camera, so there's a gap toward the back so it doesn't block the image getting to the edge of the film.

As with the internal assembly, you can add a bit of strength by gluing the edges as well as the bottom.

Place it in the bottom and clamp it while it dries.

The shutter

The shutter is a three layer sliding shutter. 

Here are the parts of the shutter. The one with the square hole is the taking shutter and the round hole is for the film counter. The 35mm camera only has the taking shutter.

The middle layer, which includes the actual moving shutter should be made with two layers of your card stock laminated together with glue to make it stiffer so it doesn't bend when you open and close it. This is probably the fiddliest part to cut because of the double layer. Most of it can be done with a scissors if you're careful, but the inside of the middle channel has to be cut with a craft knife. Use a new blade and go slow with several strokes. Let the knife cut because it's sharp. When you're cutting the sliding part, be careful not to cut those little tabs off.

Start by gluing the back to the channel. Check the fit of the slider and carefully trim the tabs if it's too wide. 

Then apply the glue to the top of the channel, place the slider in place, place the top on and clamp.
This is a moving part so when you glue it together you have to be very careful not to glue it into immobility, yet it's important that it doesn't come apart. Remember to roughen shiny surfaces, be careful to use enough but not excess glue, spread the glue into a thin layer, leave a little gap near the inside channel where the parts move.

The shutter handle is made from two pieces of your double layer of cardboard the same width as the sliding part of the shutter. After you have the shutter clamped, you can glue and clamp them on.

I always move the shutter right away after putting the clamps on and move it every several minutes until I'm sure I haven't glued it in place.

Once they're dry glue them over the corresponding holes on the camera and clamp them with several rubber bands.  The rubber bands have tendency to move the parts with the wet glue around, so make sure they're still where you want them to be and adjust the rubber bands accordingly if they're pulling the shutter out of place. Make sure you don't glue the sliding shutter in place!

The winders

You'll need a 120 reel or 35mm cassette at this point. You used to be able to get handfuls of these from photo labs which were in almost any city. You can buy them from photo suppliers (You're probably going to have to get the 120 film by mail order anyway). And you might have one of those lensed cameras that takes 120 and you already have lots of them.

For 120 film, I use two winders so that if the film gets a little crabby about moving you can loosen the supply side and then tighten the take-up side, and I recently accidentally wound past the number with a single winder camera. With a second winder you can just roll it back.

The winders are made out of 3/8 inch dowels. which are probably 10mm outside the US. If you had to buy one I'd get oak since it's the strongest option, but I've used anything I can get my hands on. The previous owner of our house left a stash of dowel sticks that had been used as the handle for little flags people wave at parades that I used for years.

I do this with a really cheap little coping saw, but I have done it with a keyhole saw, mitre box saw, a dremel tool, a hack saw and even a full size cross cut saw once.

The 120 and 35mm winders are slightly different. 

First the 120 winders, I use a 30mm piece and draw a line around the circumference 6mm from the end.  I then hand draw where the tab will be on the end of the dowel. If you make this tab in line with the grain of the wood, instead of across it, it will be much stronger. I always like to err on the wide side and then whittle it down to fit into the slot with my Xacto knife or a pocket knife. I hold the dowel in a scrap of wood with a shallow 3/8" hole drilled in it, but I've done it with a vise-grips or pliers. I start the cut with my finger guiding the saw. Make sure you keep the cut vertical and cut exactly to the 6mm line. You want to have both shoulders at the same level.

Then turn the vise-grips, line up the cuts you just made parallel to the table, and cut down the 6mm line. Be careful to stay level and stop before you cut into the tab you're trying to make. Then, as I said, whittle to fit. You want them to insert all the way into the slot, and they should be a little tight.

The 35mm winder has a slot that engages the tab inside the film reel.  Make sure this is wide enough that the tab will go completely into it.  If it's not wide enough, it may seem like it's engaged, but might slip if you encounter any resistance.  Also, some times the central shaft of a 35mm film reel may be a bit narrow and you may have to sand the end a little bit to make it fit.

Then with the 120 reel or 35mm cassette in, with the boxes together, insert the winder so it's fully seated into the slot, and draw a line around the winder which will only be a millimeter or two from the shoulder. Whittle a shallow groove where the line is to give the glue somewhere to grab on.

Apply glue around this groove and slide the winder collar on from the bottom, black side down, so that it's exactly aligned with the groove. You want that collar to sit right on the top of the camera. If the hole in the winder collar is a little tight, you might feel it catch the groove. Make sure any excess glue on the bottom is wiped off so it doesn't dry into little bumps.

Then remove it and let it dry.

Light proofing

Now, if you're not really confident your print and cardboard combination is truly opaque, is the time to add a little additional barrier. The easiest and I think a very effective way, is to paint it with three or so coats of matte black paint. If you want to preserve the design on the outside from your cereal box, you should probably use some masking tape and paper to cover that. Not a bad idea to paint the outside of the inside box from about the middle to the back to make it harder for light to get down that way. You could blacken the sides of the inner box with a Sharpee.

If you can't do spray or some other paint, I've included a template for another layer for the 6x6 imaging area in the front, which can double as a pinhole mount, and the entire back of the camera. Everywhere else you've already got several layers. Remember everything on the inside of the camera has to be black. If you've beaten up the template leaving light spots, blacken them with a Sharpee.

The film rides over the folded edge of the internal assembly which could be a little rough.  Cover that edge with something smooth like black tape or glue a bit of old black T-shirt over it. Make sure you glue it flat so it doesn't get in the way of your image.

The pinhole

Drilling the pinhole can be done in several ways.  I do it by inserting the dull end of a #10 quilting needle in a pencil eraser. I use a small bit of foamcore or several layers of corrugated cardboard to hold the needle perfectly vertically while I drill with it. Use a small piece of .002 inch brass shim stock or drinking can aluminum. Place it on a hard surface the needle can't penetrate. For a .15mm pinhole place it on one sheet of paper.  For a .2mm, two pieces of paper and for .3mm, on four sheets or thin cardboard like a matchbook cover.

Rotate the needle to drill into the metal. A burr will form on the opposite side. Sand the burr off with fine sand or emery paper, at least 400 grit. Dust from the sanding tends to end up in the hole, so if you can, blow it out with compressed air, or run in under the faucet at full blast. (Make sure it's completely dry before mounting it.)

To measure really accurately you'll need a flat bed scanner. You might be able to do it with a microscope attachment for your phone camera. If you don't have a way to measure it, do your best and just try it out and you'll probably be within a stop.  If you end up too overexposed or your images are too blurry, try again. It's easy and cheap.

The optimal pinhole size is .2mm for a 24mm camera, for a 45mm camera is .28mm and for 60mm is .33mm. The F ratio is going to depend on the size of your pinholes, but with the ideal pinholes on these it's f116 for the 24mm camera, f159 for the 45mm, and f183 for the 60mm. 

In any event, tape the pinhole on the inside of the camera. If your tape isn't black, blacken it or cover it with the light proofing layer. You can leave a little shiny metal around the pinhole, but minimize it. With the longer cameras it's hard to get your fingers in there to mount it, so the front light proofing layer can double as a pinhole mount. Make sure the pinhole mount lines up with the front of the camera when you glue or tape it in there. If you use tape to secure it, that makes it easy to change the pinhole if you need to.

The viewfinders.

Glue the viewfinders on the top and sides of the camera. I like a little bit of 3D in my view finding lines and find it worthwhile to put the viewfinder on a double layer of card stock. Be careful that they're square with the back and the points are aligned with the pinhole.

The winder minder

There's really nothing but friction holding the winders in, and losing one will probably result in a light leak on your film.  (If you do lose one with film in the camera, put a piece of black tape over the hole, and wind it in subdued light with a key)  The winder minder slips over the winders and holds them on and is itself held on with two rubber bands.

Advancing the film.  

Film advance should be smooth if you've gotten the film bays the right size.  If the film gets a little sticky, loosen with the supply side and then take it up with the take-up.  Make sure the winders are both tight or you might have a bit of curved film inside the camera.  By the way, it shouldn't make any difference which is the supply side and which the take up, but if you put the supply on the right, the numbers will be right-side-up in the film counter window.

If you're mounted on a sturdy tripod and coordinated enough, advancing with both hands turning the winders at the same time is particularly smooth.

For film loading and counting in the 35mm camera follow this link for instructions

Then you go out and take pictures.

Paper cameras are not waterproof, and paper doesn't wear well, but I've got one that is covered in opaque black photographic tape that I've had in my pocket for 10 years.

It probably takes about 4 hours work, but there's a bunch of times you have to wait for glue to dry, preferably overnight.

Have fun.  Let me know of any comments or questions or if you find a mistake or something that needs clarification.

If you make one of these cameras, I'd love to feature it and the pictures you make with it on the blog.