Why is my pinhole camera only making a small circle on 120 film?
Asked 2/3/2021
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My homemade pinhole camera is producing a small circular image on 120 film instead of covering more of the negative. The pinhole is about f/323, and the film is roughly 73mm behind the pinhole. I’m not worried about the light leaks right now. Is the film too far from the pinhole, or is something else causing the image circle to be so small?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
5y ago
2 Answers
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You have vignetting. It's probably not from the pinhole failing to cover the film; more likely the pinhole is in too narrow a hole in the front panel material, and that material is blocking light from the pinhole reaching the film (or light from the scene reaching the pinhole).
I base this in part on the shape of the vignette -- if it were an exposure related vignette (as can happen if you don't account for the change in distance to center of the film vs. corners of the frame), it would be perfectly circular and the drop-off would be very gradual. In your case, the vignette has a distinctly non-circular shape and a moderately sharp edge.
Try opening your shutter and looking through the pinhole (at a bright background) from the corners of the film frame -- I think you'll find the light will be blocked. The solution to this is to bevel the hole in the front panel where the pinhole is mounted, so the hole doesn't block the light to the frame's corners.
From comments, I understand the pinhole here is just a tiny hole in the wood front panel of the camera. This would be improved by being drilled out to a diameter at least as large as the thickness of the wood, and mounting a piece of aluminum or brass on the back with the pinhole (0.1 to 0.5 mm diameter, depending on various factors) drilled in it.
What you have clearly forms an image, but it vignettes itself.
Originally by user89902. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user89902
5y ago
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The main problem is likely not the pinhole-to-film distance. It’s probably mechanical vignetting: the pinhole is mounted in material that’s too thick, or the opening around the pinhole is too narrow, so the front panel blocks angled light from reaching the edges of the film.
With a pinhole, you want a very small hole in a very thin material. If the pinhole sits inside a thick wooden front, that thickness acts like a tunnel and limits the field of view. That produces a small image circle with relatively defined edges, which matches your result.
Making the film closer or farther changes image size and angle of view, but it won’t fix this kind of clipping by itself. Enlarging the pinhole would increase coverage, but also reduce sharpness, so that’s usually not the best first fix.
A better solution is to mount the pinhole in thin metal (or otherwise thin the material around it) so light can reach the whole frame. A simple test: open the shutter and, from the film plane corners, look toward the pinhole against a bright background. If the wood blocks part of the view, that’s the cause.
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