When we were in Buenos Aires this past May, I stumbled upon a vendor selling pinhole cameras in a market. They were painted nicely and I knew this was the perfect souvenir for me.
Pinhole Camera
The camera consists of a spring loaded shutter, empty film canister and box with a pin hole to expose the film. You take a new roll of film, open the empty film canister, tape it to the post and seal it up. You then slide the film into the exposure box. Place this all inside the outer case and you are good to go.
There is a little tab on the back of the exposure box that fits into the film sprocket holes. When you wind the empty canister with a key the tab makes a clicking noise as it moves from sprocket to sprocket. When you hear 13 clicks you are onto the next frame.
I went out on a sunny day to give it a try. A roll of 24 photos gave me 15 exposures. It was fun not knowing what you were framing and I was eagerly anticipating the results. Unfortunately most of what I got back was a blurry mess... I should have known better and brought along a tripod to stabilize the camera while I was shooting, it was tough to know how long to keep the shutter open. The exposures looked close enough but there was just too much camera shake. The following 2 photos were the best of the bunch. I might try again with a small tripod one day. Overall it was a fun experiment and one of the best souvenirs I have picked up on my travels.
A Blurry Wonderland
Downtown YYC
