Building My Dream Camera

     A box with a hole. That's it; every single camera is a box with a hole. 

   Some cameras are more sophisticated than others, but the only thing you need to make a photograph is a box with a hole and some photosensitive material. 

    I've been a little bit obsessed with panoramic cameras. Still, most panoramic film cameras are expensive and hard to find, so I decided to move into another direction and see if I could find a good pinhole panoramic camera.  I have a Holga wide panoramic and an Ondu multiformat. Both cameras create a 6x12mm negative, but both produce vignetting. The only way to get a panoramic negative without vignetting on a pinhole camera is when the film plane is curved. 

    In a curved film plane, every point on the plane is at the same distance to the pinhole. The light travels the same distance to each point, creating a seamless image without a vignette. There are a few curved pinhole panoramic cameras, but the one that caught my eye is the Ondurama. 

    The Ondurama is a curved plane pinhole panoramic camera, uses 120 film, and the size of each negative is 6x17mm. I've been dreaming of getting an Ondurama for months but, sadly, are sold out, and I have no idea when they are going to be available again. The idea of building one has always been in my mind, but it has never been a priority until now (hello pandemic). 

    I accepted the challenge of making a curved plane pinhole panoramic camera using a wine box. The camera has a 95mm focal length, and the negative size is 6x22mm, which gives me only 3 frames per roll. I still got a bit of vignetting, but considering the size of the negative, I'm happy. 

    Here are my best photographs. 

Sadly, most part of the building process was documented on a Twitter thread that no longer exists. Still,if you want to make a pinhole camera and don't know where to start? Here are some helpful links:

• The Science of Photography: Pinhole
• Mr. Pinhole: Pinhole Design Calculators
• 6x24mm Pinhole Camera