Alternative to a Digital Camera: A Box with a Hole in it
June 18, 2008 · Print This Article
We may not have liked Low Tech Magazine’s bumper car idea, but this one is actually really good. Sometimes, in this world full of ever-increasing, complicated technology, the simplest solutions are the best ones, as Low Tech shows with their pinhole camera demonstration. Pinhole cameras are the ultra-green consumer’s alternative to purchasing expensive digital cameras that will just be obsolete e-waste in a few years – just get a box and put a small hole in it.
From Low Tech Magazine:
A pinhole camera is very easy to make yourself, although it can also be bought. Basically, it is a light-tight box with a tiny pinhole on one side (made with a needle) and photo paper or film on the other side (taped to the box). No lens, battery or automatic operation is used. A pinhole camera can be constructed from a can or a container, as in this mint tin [see photo] (see the pictures made with it) or this tea can. The vessel used could also be a coffee pot, for instance. A pinhole camera can be built from scratch using cardboard or wood, or made from an existing camera by removing the lens and replacing it with a pinhole. These low-tech cameras could be as small as a matchbox, but they might as well have the dimensions of a suitcase or a refrigerator as they allow you to produce gigantic photographs.
The photos pinhole cameras produce are really stunning. They have that romantic, hazy, sort of eerie quality to them that’s hard to capture with a super-sharp digital camera. Plus, as Low Tech points out, “Digital photography might spare the harmful chemicals of the analog developing process, but the materials and energy needed to produce a continuous stream of new gadgets (and batteries) is far worse.”
Link [Low Tech Magazine]
Photo credit: Chris Keeney
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I disagree. A lithium ion battery can’t be nearly as bad as a couple gallons of difficult-to-dispose-of fixer. I’ve done enough photography to have to call bullshit on that one.
Unless you buy a new digital camera every other month, there’s no way they have a solid claim here. Fixer is some serious hell juice, and then the developer isn’t all that great either.