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2 Ansco Shur Shots + 2 Pinholes = 1 Pinsco

That’s about all the math I did for my new pinhole creation.  No measuring, no calculating of exposure times, just raw gut instinct (okay, guessing).

You can find out more about my first adventure with a pinhole here.  I didn’t want to clutter Holga Blog with the details of how the Pinsco came to be, so I’ll post that here.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I’ll help you as much as I can!

The Pinsco is a frankenstein.  Part Shur Shot, part Shur Shot Jr, part things I bought at ACE Hardware (brass shims and electrical tape).

Once I realized it would be too much effort to make a 120 pinhole camera from scratch, I decided to work with what I had plenty of: cameras.  I pulled apart both the Shur Shot and the Jr before realizing that the simplest solution would be to use parts of both.

I started my adventure with the Shur Shot Jr.  I needed a B (bulb) or Time mode, so I not-too-subtly removed the springs that work the shutter.  Shortly after I yanked these out, I realized I couldn’t get the interior lens out of the body!  So I turned to the Shur Shot…

Here you can see the mechanism of the Shur Shot's Time function

Which is great!  Much easier to have a Time function than to rip things apart to create a Time function.

Oh.  That makes things difficult.  These cameras might be old and cheap, but those lenses are securely attached!  After some sitting and sighing and grumbling, I realized that the Jr’s faceplate didn’t have a lens, the Shur Shot’s body didn’t have a lens and the Jr’s film carrier was also lens-free!

Amazingly, the combination worked!  The Shur Shot’s film carrier doesn’t quite fit in the Jr, so I was lucky.

Now that the body of the Pinsco was worked out, I had to work out the pinhole bit.  The Shur Shot has 3 aperture selections, sunny, cloudy and a yellow filter.  You switch between apertures by sliding out the metal lever labeled Diaphragm (you can see this in the close ups above).

The original apertures - I used 1 and 2 for the Pinsco

I bought thin brass shim (0.1″ thick) and cut it into squares that fit over the aperture openings.  I used a average-looking needle to make the pinhole for aperture 1 and a thumbtack (push pin) to make aperture 2.

I colored the brass black (permanent marker) to avoid reflection

I then attached the (tiny) brass rectangles to the aperture lever using glue dots and electrical tape.

pre-electrical taping

Once this was done, I put the Pinsco back together (takes about 10 seconds), loaded it with film, taped it up with electrical tape to avoid light leaks and accidental openings and… voila!  Check out Holga Blog for the results of my first roll – needs improvement,  but I was pretty pleased.  :)

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