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July 26, 2005
How to Make a Homemade Shutter
Today was one of those days that starts out mediocre and gets worse as the day goes by. Hoping to salvage the last hours of my evening, I worked on my new pinhole camera. I recently bought a Polaroid 545 back on Ebay, and have been building a camera around it. So far, I am pretty happy with it, and I will show it to you more in the following posts. Tonight my challenge was to build a simple shutter system. Everything I have tried so far has been built of cardboard and tape, and it just hasn't worked as well as I would like. Looking through my junk, I found an old floppy disk. I rigged it up to a ballpoint pen, and the result appears to be a pretty sturdy homemade shutter system. The nice thing is that it gives me a bulb mode. Click the pen once, the shutter opens. Click it again and it closes. Perfect for a pinhole camera. A good end to a crappy day.
Posted by Adrian at July 26, 2005 11:07 PM
Comments
I'm really interested to know how to build a pinhole camera with a Polaroid 545 back. I've been thinking of that for a while but i've not bought a polaroid back yet which i think is the most important for that.
Why you don't use some foil for the shutter and a black tape??
I made a pinhole camera last winter from a can and using some photo paper. As it takes some time and some chemistry before being able to load the can again i've not made too many photos but i love that can camera. I have all the exposure time for it and i know i can make great photos from it.
I've posted on my photo website 2 photos taken with that can if you want to have a look :
http://anita.designfacility.net/?var2=5
I'm waiting for the next posting about the pinholaroid...
Posted by: anita at August 5, 2005 5:12 PM
Anita,
Hopefully I will be able to get around to explaining how I built my pinhole camera for my polaroid back. I took it out today and it worked well! Basically I just bought a back and built the camera around it. The reason I wanted something better than the tape for my shutter was because I want to try and be more accurate. Since the polaroid film is so expensive, I want to increase my chances of getting a good exposure. Plus, I think this will give less camera shake.
Posted by: Adrian at August 6, 2005 10:21 PM
I've just randomly found this page following a bit of surfing from flickr and I'm soooo pleased I did! A couple of weeks ago I was sitting looking at a floppy disk and thinking what a great pinhole shutter it would make - but got stuck on how to keep it open easily. The pen idea is total genius!!! Well done!
Posted by: alspix at December 28, 2005 4:28 PM
hi there, just wanted to thank you for the idea. i tried to build a pinhole camera shutter a few times but it never quite worked out. hopefully this version you inspired will do the trick!
Posted by: Will at September 25, 2006 11:31 PM
I like your homemade shutter, a brilliant idea. Is perfect for my new pinhole camera.
Regards from Spain.
Posted by: Jesus at December 11, 2006 5:15 PM
When I read the page title I was enthusiastic, but damn, I'm not looking for a pinhole camera shutter but a fully grown circular shutter I need for my medium format project. Any ideas?
Posted by: hboy at August 1, 2007 2:11 PM
I like this idea and i am going to use it, but does anyone know how long to expose a camera with a 127 roll of film/ iso 100 with the aperture about 50 f-stops? Because this i the film i am thinking of using in my pinhole and i am starting wonder if i should just use photopaper instead.
Posted by: craig at November 7, 2007 10:14 PM