I know about pinhole cameras from a friend’s memory. He shared his childhood story of making cameras with different types of cans. I was curious about this self-made camera and wanted to make one. Although, it was hard to find photo paper and a darkroom with all equipment to develop negative-photo in Saigon back then, especially in the digital age.
2 years later, I had a chance to visit a small photography workshop of Noirfoto in District 2. The workshop was about making a pinhole camera with shoeboxes, then developing and processing negative-photo in their darkroom. The workshop was very insightful. It brought me back to the basic notion of how light can be captured to project images in photography. To me, the difficult part of using a pinhole camera is calculating the right amount of time to capture enough light for a photo. Below are some attempts with my shoebox.
And below was the process of making a shoebox camera at Noirfoto.
