• archive
  • blog
  • publications
  • store
  • about
  • contact
  • newsletter
  • Menu

aows

  • archive
  • blog
  • publications
  • store
  • about
  • contact
  • newsletter
DSC05452_cover.jpg

Homemade Pinhole Lens for the Sony a6000

August 02, 2018 in journal

I love playing around with different photographic techniques and camera gear to create stuff.

Cameras like the Holga, pinhole cameras or techniques like long exposures are fascinating to me. As I've mentioned before, they open a door to a world that you can imagine, and with a little bit of luck, capture with your camera.

 

Why a digital pinhole camera

I love my Holga and the images I can create with it. The problem is, though, that it involves a lot of trial and error, and that can get really expensive when shooting film.

For a long time, I've been wanting to try pinhole photography. If you don't know, a pinhole lens is not really a lens, just a tiny hole in front of the film / sensor of your camera.

A few weeks ago, I built a homemade pinhole lens for my Sony a6000. This way, I can play with it as much as I want, fail as many times as I'm willing to try, and still not spend a cent.

 

The pinhole lens

The lens itself is just a cap for the Sony a6000 (you can buy it here). I made a small hole using a screw, put a lot of tape on it, and made a much smaller, tiny hole on the tape with a needle.

I have no idea about the equivalent f-stop of this lens. It has to be something like f/60 or f/80, judging by the shutter speed and ISO the camera chooses.

It has a very, very strong vignette (I love it!). It's very, very soft (I love it even more!).

The lens doesn't have any kind of glass, so dust might (well, it will) get inside. That means I'll have to clean the sensor every once in a while, but I'm ok with that.

 

Project ii

This is how Project ii was born. I spent a whole afternoon playing with some toys and figures, light and a bowl of water to create these images.

The success of this experiment wants me to want to play with a real film pinhole camera. Maybe in the future.

View fullsize DSC09658.jpg
View fullsize DSC09719.jpg
View fullsize DSC09729.jpg
View fullsize DSC09740.jpg

A few days later, I decided to purchase a professionally made pinhole lens, by Holga -not sure if it's the same company that makes the Holga camera. I'll talk about this one in another post.

Do you have a pinhole camera?

If you do, please let me know! I'm really interested in this stuff and I'd love to see your work with a pinhole camera.

Tags: holga, pinhole, sony a6000
Prev / Next
Featured
May 19, 2025
Photography Plans vs Reality (from the Upper Peninsula, Michigan)
May 19, 2025
May 19, 2025
May 14, 2025
The practice of seeing
May 14, 2025
May 14, 2025
May 5, 2025
The first days are the hardest
May 5, 2025
May 5, 2025
Apr 22, 2025
Goodbye, SF
Apr 22, 2025
Apr 22, 2025
Apr 15, 2025
How wide is *too* wide?
Apr 15, 2025
Apr 15, 2025
Mar 28, 2025
Roads of Scotland
Mar 28, 2025
Mar 28, 2025
Mar 27, 2025
Obsessed
Mar 27, 2025
Mar 27, 2025