Photocritic photography blog

So, you fancy yourself a bit of a photographer, do you? Awesome, that makes two of us. Or, judging by the number of people regularly visiting his blog, a few thousand of us. If you’ve ever played around with pinhole photography (and if you haven’t, you totally should), you’ll have stumbled across Paper Negatives - or the idea of using photosensitive paper rather than film - to make photos.

My good friend R. James Davis (check out his website, his photograhy rocks) recently wrote a wicked little piece about what Paper negatives are, what they are, and how (and why) they are used. Read the rest of the article »

Over on Photon Detector, Nicolai has collected a great sample of odd pinhole photography projects:

The great thing about making cameras is that they’re really dead simple: box light detector (film or sensor) hold for light = camera. When there’s no lens involved, there’s heaps of room for creativity. While many people opt for more traditional materials like wood, metal, foamcore, or modify an existing camera, some people go all out.

Read the rest of the article »

There are cheap projects, and then there are Cheap projects. This is one of the latter, no doubt. In this project, we aren’t modifying a camera, we’re building one completely from scratch! And is that wasn’t enough, you can do so with some tape, some paper, a paperclip… You get the picture: Just stuff you have kicking about the office. Read the rest of the article »

A lot of pinhole photography stuff recently, but that’s because it’s cool, yo!

My old mate over at PhotoThoughts keeps coming up with these groovy, outlandish camera mods, and I love him for it: Read the rest of the article »

So, you’ve gone tired of making pinhole cameras out of milk cartons, tins, and boxes? You are thinking bigger? These guys built a pinhole lorry, using the entire loading bed as a pinhole camera!

American photographer Shaun Irving and English Art Director Richard Browse have created what they believe to be the world’s largest mobile camera. Designed in America and constructed in Spain, the cameratruck is a simple box camera built right inside a standard delivery truck. Measuring 5 metres long, 2 metres wide and 2 metres high, the gigantic camera is capable of taking pictures almost 3 metres across. Read the rest of the article »

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any sillier, Adrian comes along and creates a pinhole camera out of Lego!

The amazing thing is, it actually works quite well. Another fun tidbit? It comes with a full photo-by-photo explanation as to how it was done.

The camera uses medium format film, which is nifty in itself. The site’s well worth a visit!

Pinhole photography is one of the oldest classics in the Photography book. It isn’t difficult either, and with a few pointers and some trial and error, you could easily build yourself a pinhole photography box in an afternoon, with only the bare minimum of expenses.

Of course, it is all a lot easier if you get a good, longish description of how to do it. My dear friend Katie has an excellent introduction in her blog, titled “Teaching a cardboard box to be a camera” - An excellent starting point indeed. Read the rest of the article »