This 2,500-year-old photo technique lets you shoot without a camera lens – here's how to do it

Blurred image of a narrow walkway lined with stone walls and covered in autumn leaves under colorful foliage.

Today is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day – the perfect opportunity to rediscover the origins of photography and experiment with a simple, lens-free photo technique – inspired by the earliest days of image-making.

The camera obscura, also known as a pinhole camera, is one of the oldest photographic concepts in history, dating back over 2,500 years to the 5th century BC. As part of his studies on how we see, the Arab scholar Ibn Al-Haytham is credited with inventing this camera, showing how light can be used to project an image onto a flat surface.

With the rise of advanced technology in DSLR and mirrorless cameras, there has been an increased focus on achieving technically perfect images. As a result, ultra-sharp, flawless photographs have become the standard. In contrast, digital pinhole photography takes the medium back to its origins, producing soft, atmospheric images that stand out for their character and emotional impact.

How it works: pinhole photography

A full-frame DSLR converted into a digital pinhole camera (Image credit: Future Owns)

Pinhole photography takes your imaging back to its roots – to create your own, you need a spare body cap, a drill, some aluminum foil, a needle, and sticky tape.

A digital pinhole camera requires no lens – it works by letting light in through a small hole in the body cap. The purpose of this hole is to restrict the amount of light reaching the sensor, creating an almost infinite depth of field.

When the light passes through the tiny pinhole, you create soft, dreamy, and slightly blurred photographs with a unique, artistic quality.

By creating your own pinhole camera, you can explore a distinctive, abstract aesthetic that contrasts with the sharpness of modern digital photography (Image credit: Kim Bunermann / Future Owns)

First, create a card or paper template of the body cap by drawing around it and marking the centre point. Place the template over the body cap and drill to create the hole with a diameter of around 2-4mm. To create the actual pinhole, cut off a small piece of aluminium foil and carefully prick a hole.

Bear in mind that the smaller the hole, the sharper your image will be. Use a piece of tape to attach the foil to the cap in the centre. Lastly, attach the body cap instead of the lens. You can find a more detailed step-by-step tutorial here.

Pro tip

As you can no longer focus on subjects within the frame, you have less influence on the composition. This limited amount of intervention forces you to be more creative, bringing the choice of subject and composition of the image back to the fore.

Before shooting, consider how shapes, structures, and colors change through the pinhole effect. The lack of light hitting the sensor also means you can experiment with intentional camera movement or long exposure.

Through the pinhole, this autumn scene gains on abstraction, highlighting the scene's colors and shapes (Image credit: Future)

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