Adventures with Pinhole and Home-Made Cameras

by John Evans

Adventures with Pinhole and Home-made Cameras is a unique book, designed to inspire and inform anyone with a passion for creative image-making. Detailed case history profiles, featuring renowned... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 2880467144
• ISBN13: 9782880467142
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Rotovision
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.6" x 10.4"

Customer Reviews

Every would-be photographer should start here

Study this book. Build some of the projects. Shoot photos with the cameras you build. I promise you that when you're done, you'll understand more about photography than you ever would learn taking pictures on your own with a store-bought digital or film camera. The ideas in this book are fiendishly clever, and will help you explore imaging concepts that you never dreamed existed. This book should be required reading at any university or community college with a beginning photo course.

Not for the wanna-be-adventurer

I was NOT disappointed with ''Adventures With Pinhole and Home-Made Cameras'' because it demonstrates a variety of radically different approaches to photography with unusual cameras. This book offers brief sketches of their making - exactly what I wanted. There is no need for blueprints as I have no desire to follow EXACTLY where others have already trod. ''Adventures'' is the first word in the title, after all. This book is eminently practically for the photographic tinkerer who wishes to think for him/herself and has no need to be led by the hand. Thankfully, even the most sophisticated designs in the book are explained in at least a cursory way. Detailed plans, step-by-step instructions and parts lists are not what this book is about : you will not be spoon-fed stock design instructions. Detailed descriptions and breakdowns of real home-made cameras are unnecessary as builders will make use of whatever materials and techniques are available to them! The book also offers tired old ideas, like using glass as an improvised lens (see ''Weegee's Creative Camera'', 1959), which may be a boon for the uninitiated. There is also a section in the back with information on making pinholes, calculating exposure times, etc. Most of this information, of course, can be easily found on the Internet (or your local library), the many details of which will be greatly expanded upon. Free interactive pinhole camera design software can easily be located online as well. I bought this book as an educated photographer with an interest in building some unusual designs, so I have no need to copy existing camera designs ... how unusual would such a camera be? Thankfully this book makes no claims which it does not fulfill. Allow me to point out the first word in the title again : ADVENTURES. Blaze your own trail! This book will inspire all but the insipid, and will encourage even the timid to try. Don't allow one bad (badly reasoned, I might add) review to delay your purchase as I had done.

Just what I wanted.

More of a general book on pinhole, slit, direct paper, etc. photography with great example pix & limited descriptions/photos of worldwide photographers & their "cameras". More than I could ever imaging. How about a VW van?

Inspiring blend of artistic visions and practical aspects

Ever since I own this book, I find myself picking it up again and again. It is divided into two parts: one containing an interesting array of very diverse photographers, united only by their use of non-readymade equipment. Personally, I find the way in which the hyper-sharp pictures of Alistair Thain, taken with precision-engineerd cameras of his own design, reveal their disturbing aspects as inspiring as the monochrome pinhole pictures of Walter Crump whose equipment is reduced to bare bones - and there are other very interesting artists. If there is an artistic message emanating from this part, it is about the relativity of technical aspects in photographic art: personal aims, a distinct individual perspective matter so much more than the reliance on the latest technological advance. The second part deals with practical aspects of tinkering one's own equipment: it includes very useful hints and tables for making pinholes, zone plates, lenses, shutters, different sizes of film, camera bodies, focussing helps and view finders. While by no means exhaustive, these tips should be seen as a jumping-off place to develop one's own design - which may very well lead to much more satisfying results than buying the latest gadget.