Is it possible to take colour pictures with a pinhole camera?

Posted on March 12th, 2010 by admin in coloring pictures | 3 Comments »

I did pinhole photography at college, but we only printed black and white pictures. Is it not possible to do colour?
I understand everything comes out the wrong way round, everything black comes out white and everything white comes out black. So I thought maybe not.

Absolutely possible if you are using film instead of paper in the camera.

If you use color print film then your will get a proper negative that can be printed normally.

3 Responses

  1. Fishmeister Says:

    Of course it’s possible..

    Have a look at the gallery of this matchbox pinhole camera..

    http://www.matchboxpinhole.com/index.html

    .
    References :

  2. Mere Mortal Says:

    Absolutely possible if you are using film instead of paper in the camera.

    If you use color print film then your will get a proper negative that can be printed normally.
    References :

  3. Martin S Says:

    Yes, it is possible.
    You can use colour film in your pinhole camera. Developing color film is a little bit more complicated than developing B&W so the easiest would be to use a pinhole camera that allows you to use film that can be commercially deloped. You can easily convert a regular SLR camera to a pinhole camera. All you need is a body cap for the SLR. You drill a hole in the center of the body cap (approx. 5mm will do which roughly 1/5 inch) and mount the metal foil with the pinhole behind that hole. You replace the lens of the SLR with the body cap and you have a pinhole camera. If you want to shoot with the regular lens you just swap it for the body cap.
    Have a look here to get the idea, more or less randomly picked from google
    http://anttila.ca/michael/pinholelens/
    You can use those body cap pinholes also on DSLR cameras.

    Or you can make a pinhole camera that takes regular 135 film yourself: have a look here:
    http://www.pinhole.cz/en/pinholecameras/dirkon_01.html
    Some coloured pics are also on that site:
    http://www.pinhole.cz/en/gallery/

    It even provides a free calculator to calculate the optimum pinhole size and exposure times:
    http://www.pinhole.cz/en/pinholedesigner/

    Another technique to produce colored pinhole pictures is called solargraphy. In short you put a piece of B&W photographic paper into a pinhole camera (even a simple film can will do) and expose it at least for one day upto half a year (no typo!). Then you scan the the negative in a dim room and convert it into positive with some photo editing software. You don’t need any chemicals. Have a look here:
    http://www.solargraphy.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=8

    That’s a short overview how to do it. More detailed information is found on the website. Also sample pictures. Just follow the links there.
    References :
    s.a. and I did some pinhole pics with a converted SLR

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