How to Make a Pinhole Camera With Cardboard

Follow along to make your own working pinhole camera out of cardboard!

Cardboard, tape, aluminum foil, laser cutter or box cutter, sewing needle, photo paper, wood glue, darkroom and photo development supplies

Before making your pinhole camera, brainstorm what features you want, including size, depth, and style and how the camera is light-tightest openable.

For my camera, I wanted it to look like a birdhouse and be able to hang on a tree, so I drew up a house-shaped, two-piece box with a hook on the top.

Using Adobe Illustrator, create a file with all of the pieces of your camera. I used a box designer (like https://en.makercase.com/#/basicbox ) to create a box with tabs to connect the sides.

*If your box is relatively small, make sure you use larger tabs so that they are easier to put together.

My design has a box with no top and a larger box with no bottom to slide over top to create a light tight camera that is still easy to take photo paper in and out of.

I also included a frame to place inside the box to keep the photo paper from moving around during shooting.

Make sure the stroke thickness is .001" and an RGB color.

Upload the Illustrator file to a laser cutter, choose settings that cut through cardboard, level the cutter, check that the design does not go off the cardboard, and start the machine.

After removing the pieces from the laser cutter, make sure the sides of the box and all other pieces fit together correctly. If everything aligns (and all tabs fit together), use wood glue to adhere pieces together and apply tape on the inside to ensure the camera is light-tight.

Lastly, tape a piece of aluminum foil to the inside of the hole, and use a sewing needle to poke a very tiny hole in the middle of the foil.

In a darkroom, cut black and white photo paper (I used Ilford) and load it in the camera. Make sure the glossy side is facing the hole.

Take the camera somewhere with lots of light - shooting outside is smart - and line up your shot.

Depending on the amount of light exposure - or whether it's a sunny or cloudy day - remove the "lens" cover for a short amount of time. The length of exposure time can very from 10 seconds to 10 minutes depending on the amount of light.

Place the cover back on and return to the darkroom.

In the darkroom, remove the photo paper from the camera and place it in the developer for the designated amount of time. Next, move the paper into the stop bath using tongs and leave it for the designated amount of time. Do the same for the fixer and then, lastly, the water bath.

After letting the photo paper sit in the water for about five minutes, remove it and use a squeegee to remove excess water and prevent staining. Put it on a rack or hang it to dry.

The final photographs will be inverted, so use a phone or editing software to invert the photo.