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Photography Culture

This Shoebox is Actually a Pinhole Camera

Chris Gampat
No Comments
03/25/2013
2 Mins read

Last Updated on 03/25/2013 by Chris Gampat

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All images shot by Benoit Charlot, Used with Permission

Pinhole cameras are awesome and cool because of the fact that literally anything to have can be turned into a camera. But Flickr user Benoit Charlot turned this shoebox into a large format camera. He describes how he made it on his blog, but the important thing is how he created the optic. It is the equivalent of 120mm and has a constant aperture of F90. The hole is 1.5mm in diameter–which is actually fairly large.

Read a couple of words from him after the jump. Also be sure to check out the entire Flickr set.

Via F295

Monsieur Be says,:

As to my pinhole camera, it’s actually a shoebox camera. That means it’s made of a shoe box that I painted black, and it’s destined to be used with photo paper and not with film.

It’s not really a pinhole since it’s got a lens, which is a unique convergent lens: a meniscus which I insterted into an old lens of a broken 35mm camera.

The camera is close to a pinhole because it uses a diaphragm which is almost closed (1.5mm wide, four to five times larger than a typical pinhole) in order to limit the opical aberrations, and to achieve a large depth of field since it is not possible to adjust the lens.

The goal of this project was to create the most simple camera of the world. A shoebox, a small lens, black paint and photo paper. No viewfinder, no adjustment, no shutter (only a piece of scoth tape over the lens.) Just a black box.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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