Pinhole with D70

[Michael]

After seeing recent pictures taken with the Chinese pinhole cameras i embarked on an experiment which would turn my D70 into a pinhole camera.
This is what you get with a body cap, lots of gaffer tape, alumium foil, lots of patience and last Saturday afternoon:

Kranji War Memorial in colour:


and B&W:

[knpan]

u mean u poke burn a hole in the body cap?

[Michael]

How does it work?
> take the body cap and drill a hole in it (appr. 10mm diameter)
> get a piece of gaffer tape and cut a hole in it
> get a piece of aluminium and paste it over the hole in the gaffer
> pierce a hole into the aluminum
> attach body cap to D70
> shoot

on a D70 this will give you a pinhole with a focal length of approximately 50mm

by adding an extension tube to the inside of the cap you can decrease the focal lenth to about 35mm. This is about the minimum, any closer and the mirror will hit the pinhole. If you have a camera with mirror lock then you could go closer but of course you loose the preview.

Using normal macro extension tubes, the focal length can be increased:
shoot of Causeway area at 35mm:


with 10mm extension tube:


another 15mm added:


and the final 25mm:

[Michael]

the major problem is the size of the pinhole and the quality of it. The photos i am able to take lack sharpness which i think has to do with too small pinhole, resulting in defraction problems, and protruding edges on the inside. i make the pinhole by poking the aluminium with a needle....
The pinhole seems to be more sensitive to sensor dust as well...
more experiments ahead.... any good suggestion how to improve the image quality?

[Michael]

Originally Posted by knpan u mean u poke burn a hole in the body cap?

yes, i drilled a large hole in the body cap, covered it again with gaffer tape with another smaller hole, where i placed some aluminium foil that would have the pinhole...

[jacob]

nice try. but i think you've gotten dust into your camera ccd. thus i wouldn't advice ppl doing this.

my 2 cents worth

[catchlights]

you can attach a UV filter in front of the pinhole, to prevent dust issue.

[Michael]

yes, there is definitively dust in the sensor.... i think it happened during fitting and trial at home.... not much dust enters through a 0.1mm hole..... however catchlights suggestion of attaching a UV filter to the body cap is good. have to see how i do that... i guess just superglue it on....
after that the dust risk is not bigger than what you get from normal lense change

[catchlights]

Originally Posted by Michael yes, there is definitively dust in the sensor.... i think it happened during fitting and trial at home.... not much dust enters through a 0.1mm hole..... however catchlights suggestion of attaching a UV filter to the body cap is good. have to see how i do that... i guess just superglue it on.... after that the dust risk is not bigger than what you get from normal lense change

not my idea,
if you do search in the net, someone have done this, find out how attach it.

[knpan]

what is an extension tube? a pic of it? so if theres dust on your ccd u dont use the d70s anymore for real shots?