How to Make a DIY Pinhole Lens with a Camera Body Cap: A 1-Minute Guide

Have a camera body cap lying around collecting dust? Did you know that you can easily turn it into a do-it-yourself pinhole lens? Matt from Blue Mantle Films created this 1.5-minute video tutorial that shows how.

The basic gist is that you’ll need to punch a hole through the center of your body cap and then cover that gaping hole with a metal circle cut from a soda can. A tiny hole punched through the soda can serves as the pinhole for the lens.

Here are some sample images showing the look that you can get with this type of custom pinhole lens on a digital camera:

“I recently became curious about pinhole photography, and decided to make my own DIY pinhole photography lens,” Matt writes. “The first iteration was just an old credit card that I poked a crude hole in — the pictures from that one were terrible — but as I started to refine the process and to experiment I eventually came to this iteration.”

You can find more of Matt’s videos through his YouTube channel.