35mm pinhole camera, body, pinhole, hatchways

camara

The pinhole camera is made of about 30 pieces, a lot of them are part of the basic structure of the body and, although they are important, their only function is to be able to keep inside them the film and outside them the pinhole with all its mechanism. There are another parts that I think are quite interesting so that you know your camera and can reliably work with it.


The body of the camera is made of Okume wood, glued and pinned. The inside is painted in dull black for avoiding posible highlights when the light comes through the pinhole.. The outside of the camera is dyed and varnished in tones and colours. The polishing has been made with string so that it has a satin-like shine but with an antique look. In the presentation page, you can see the new tones and colours.


We have talked about the pinhole in a hole page. Without any doubt, it is the most important part of a pinhole camera, so we must be very careful for not hitting nor denting that area. We have to think that a 256 thousandth pinhose can be obstructed with a slight dust dot. The compressed air sprays that can be found out in the photographic material shops are very useful for cleaning the pinhole.


In the majority of the pinhole cameras, the shutter is normally also the trigger and viceversa. When taking a picture, we should put the small lever up. So, we will open the path for the light through the pinhole and the picture will be taken. In the middle part, there is a small spring. It is useful for the pinhole being always closed to light and it can recover its initial position. This spring can also be used for positions in “B”.


This small crank let us pass the film so that we can make new pictures. Once the roll of film has been finished and if we do not want to lose the last picture taken, we should change the crank from the hatchway and rewind the film once again in the original plate holder. For being able to change the crank of the hatchway, it must be loose and, although it fits very well, we must be very careful for not losing it. The crank is the only spare part that is sold by separate.


They are some smalls holes in the upper part of the camera. They let us manipulating the plate holders inside the camera for loading the film or rewinding it, always helped by the crank. The hachtway that doesnt’ have the crank in that very moment, must stay closed.


The basic utility of putting a spring in the trigger is that the pinhole keeps closed while the camera is not been used for taking pictures, and that it gives very short exposure times. At a simple sight, it looks quiet illogical to put it in a pinhole camera in which the required exposure times are very long. Anyhow, the posibility of loading the camera with 35 mm rolls gives us a wide range of sensitiveness that go from 25 ASA to 3600 ASA.