You can do pinhole photography with children from about age 8, always with an adult: loading the box, choosing a subject, counting the exposure and then watching the image appear in the developer are all within their reach. The adult stays in charge of the developing chemicals, and the child does everything else.
The pinhole camera has a rare advantage here: it shows how a photograph comes into being, with no screen and no automation. With a black box, a hole and some paper, you grasp the principle of the pinhole camera hands-on, before it is explained.
In short, in 5 steps:
- Show them the image in a camera obscura
- Load the paper under red light with the adult
- Set up the camera and count the exposure
- Develop together, with the adult handling the baths
- Turn the negative into a positive
From what age
Sténoflex's guideline for its kit is age 8, always with an adult. The session involves following several steps in order, keeping the camera still during the exposure and handling a sheet without creasing it. A younger child can already watch and take part, but the session relies more on the adult.
Age matters less than organisation. What changes over the years is the share the child takes on alone: an 8-year-old frames the shot and handles the exposure, a preteen can run the whole shoot and follow their print through the baths, tongs in hand.
Start by seeing the image
Before any chemistry, show them the image. In a room plunged into darkness, a small hole in a shutter is enough to project the outside world, upside down, onto the opposite wall.
It is an experience that classes sometimes have by chance. A CE2 teacher (the third year of French primary school) described to the Fondation La main à la pâte (in French) how the pupils, in a room with the shutters closed, saw the school's façade appear on the wall, thanks to an opening of a few square centimetres left in the door.
This upside-down image makes an ideal starting point. Children understand at once that light travels in a straight line and that the camera simply collects it. The box version of this camera obscura can be built in a few minutes.
A hole in a shutter is enough: the façade outside appears upside down on the classroom wall.
What the child does and what the adult keeps
Dividing the roles is the whole basis of safety in the session. It is decided before you start, and it does not change.
- The child chooses the subject, frames the shot, opens and closes the shutter, counts the exposure out loud, then watches the image appear and takes it out of the bath with tongs under the adult's eye.
- The adult prepares the baths, pours and puts away the bottles, keeps the chemicals out of reach and deals with the used baths.
The developer and the fixer are chemicals. Gloves, tongs, a ventilated room and storage up high are enough, and specific rules apply to handling them and then disposing of them.
How a session runs
A session fits comfortably into half a day. Active moments alternate with moments of waiting, and it is this waiting that creates the surprise.
Loading. Black and white photographic paper is barely sensitive to red. Under a red safelight, the child can therefore see what they are doing while the adult helps slide the sheet into the box.
Taking the picture. You go outside, set the camera on a stable support, and open the hole for 20 seconds in sunshine with the Sténoflex, longer under clouds or in the shade. With no viewfinder, two lines drawn on the top of the box, from the hole towards the edges of the paper, show what will be in the picture.
Developing. Back under the red light, the sheet goes into the developer. The image appears within a few tens of seconds, and this is almost always the moment that gets the whole group reacting.
Fixing. The adult then moves the sheet into the stop bath and then into the fixer, before a long rinse under running water. Only after the fixer can the white light be switched back on without risk to the image.
The positive. The sheet comes out as a negative, with a black sky and light shadows. An inverted scan on the computer puts it the right way round, and it is easy to share with the family.
A Sténoflex workshop: discovering together the prints fresh from the baths.
Subjects that work with children
The long exposure decides what makes a good subject. Anything still comes out well: a façade, a tree, figurines lined up on a low wall, a bike leaning against a wall.
Anything moving fades away. A passer-by crossing the frame almost disappears from the picture, and children love this “ghost” trick. For a portrait, the model has to stay perfectly still for the whole exposure, which quickly becomes a game.
Pinhole photo by Éric Marais: during the exposure, the still chairs stay sharp, while the customers who move become blurred.
What the child learns by doing
The pinhole camera makes visible ideas you never see on a screen. Light travels in a straight line, and that is why the image arrives upside down at the back of the box.
Time becomes a material: a longer exposure gives a darker image on the negative, an exposure that is too short gives an image that is too light. And moving from negative to positive shows that a photograph is built in several steps, each one visible and understandable.
Light travels straight, the exposure time shows on the negative, and the photo is built in steps.
At school or with the family
In class, the pinhole camera fits naturally with work on light and vision. Each pupil leaves with an image they made from start to finish, from the hole to the print.
For a first try without building anything, the Sténoflex mini-lab is recommended from age 8 with an adult. It brings together the pinhole camera box, ten sheets of photographic paper, the developer, the fixer, a red safelight filter and an exposure guide card.
On the last Sunday in April, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day offers a great opportunity for a project: a class or a family can submit their images under a single group name and see them join those from all over the world.
The contents of a Sténoflex mini-lab, here in red: the pinhole camera box, the photographic paper, the red safelight filter, the developer and fixer, and the exposure guide card.
Header image: loading photographic paper into the Sténoflex under a red safelight.
Éric Marais — Photographer, author of two books on pinhole photography (published by Pearson) and creator of the Sténoflex. Since the very beginning, he has run introductory workshops in pinhole photography and analogue developing.