If you have a Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera and a love for retro photos, the Skink Pinhole Pancake Pro Kit can instantly turn your camera into a digital Holga pinhole camera. It’s a modular system that provides three kinds of “holes”:

Depending on the desired effect, you can use your camera as a pinhole-, zone plate- or zones sieve camera. To a high degree the installed aperture determines how your vision is creatively interpreted in rendering an image. The traditional pinhole creates relatively sharp images with exposure times ranging from one second to several minutes. With a zone plate or zone sieve however, photos can be taken without a tripod, if the lighting conditions permit higher speeds.

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Randomly came across this camera today on Wikipedia in the article on Stasi, the secret police of East Germany. Apparently it’s a “quiet” camera that was able to capture photographs through 1mm holes in walls. Now that’s a pinhole camera.

If you see anyone carrying this thing around, be very alarmed.

Image credits: GDR Stasi Camera by Appaloosa

Did you know you can turn your DSLR into a pinhole camera by using a body cap with a tiny hole in it? Photojojo just started selling body caps converted for this purpose in their store, but if you don’t want to pay $50 for them to bust a hole in a cap for you, there’s a neat tutorial over at Photocritic teaching you how to make your own.

This photograph results from exposing a pinhole camera while it’s spinning around on a record player. A simple yet creative idea, huh?

(via Gizmodo)

Image credit: follow the tunes.. by Tim Franco and used with permission

Always wanted a manual Leica but couldn’t afford it? This Likea pinhole camera may not reproduce Leica-quality photos, or necessarily feel like a Leica (it’s made from card stock), but it looks like one! Though it may be more manual than you can handle: for $20, you just get the Likea MPH kit that you’ll still need to assemble. And you’ll have to make your own pinhole part out of a soda can. But after all, it’s not the camera that makes the photographer.

(via Wired)

There’s no app for this: Etsy seller Erin Paysse designed this pinhole camera out of an iPhone box. It’s been done before with an iPod box, but Paysse added a clean, retro touch to the camera. She’s selling the camera for $80, as well as some prints produced by the camera for $25.

Check out her store to see more creative pinhole cameras made out of  boxes and books.

(via Boing Boing)

peekfreak is a collaborative project between industrial designer Wai Lam and experimental photographer Yann Huey in which they explore the possibility of making cameras using everyday objects. The cameras they’ve made so far use things such as discarded bike parts, plastic containers, and 3.5” floppy disks.

The cameras are extremely minimalistic, and the sliding metal cover of the floppy disk is used as a simple shutter mechanism to expose the film. Check out the innards:

Since the cameras are so randomly put together, the resulting photographs have their unique looks depending on construction:

If getting weird looks while doing photography is your thing, then these cameras are for you! They aren’t for sale and there isn’t any tutorial on how to make these, but the cameras are simple enough that you should be able to figure it out from the photographs.

peekfreak (via Gizmodo)

Image credits: Photographs by peekfreak

Steven Monteau is a French photographer who creates wild do-it-yourself cameras, including “the Jaw” and “the Guillotine”. His latest creation, the Battlefield pinhole camera, uses 3 rolls of 35mm film and exposes them simultaneously to capture unique looking images.

Here’s an example of what the Battlefield camera can do. It’s a photograph taken by Monteau titled “Meriadeck under attack !!!”:

The best part is, you can make one of these things yourself! The complete do-it-yourself tutorial for this extensive project is posted over at DIYPhotography.net, but be warned: the project likely requires countless hours, loads of patience, and existing skill with your hands.

If you do end up making one of these bad boys, don’t forget to leave a comment sharing your resulting photographs!

Image credits: Photographs by Steven Monteau

This amazing pinhole camera is so small that it’s amazing it actually works. It was created by Francesco Capponi (Dippold on Flickr), the same guy who created the nifty printable 35mm cardboard pinhole camera we featured a while back.

Here are a couple more views of this extraordinary camera to give you a better idea of how it works:

To prove the camera is fully-functional, Capponi took the following photograph with it, titled “my little eye“:

The film used to capture this image was simple black and white photo paper.

Sadly, Capponi doesn’t have a tutorial out for making one of these amazing cameras (they would make fun conversation pieces), but hopefully he’ll post some explanation and/or instructions soon!

(via Gizmodo)

You might have seen the coffee mug that looks like a Canon L Lens, but have you seen this camera lens that looks like a coffee mug?

This strange 150mm coffee cup pinhole lens was created by paradefotos, and actually works (though the photos are pretty blurry).

Unlike the L lens coffee mug, this coffee mug lens isn’t nearly as desirable, and probably won’t become the next “must have” camera item. Funny idea though.

Image credit: Coffee cup pinhole lens by paradefotos and used with permission