Can You Make Your Own Camera? Absolutely! Here Are Some Ideas

Believe it or not, you absolutely can make your own camera. What’s even better, you can make simpler ones with stuff that’s already lying around your house. A camera, at its core, is simple: a light-proof box, a tiny hole to let light in, and something to catch the image – that’s it. People have built working cameras out of beer cans, cardboard boxes, entire rooms, and even food items.

In this article, we’ll go down a rabbit hole of making your own DIY camera. Everything from dead-simple models to absurd ones, to some more complicated digital stuff.

How Does a Homemade Camera Even Work?

Every camera, from a disposable to a $6,000 mirrorless, runs on the same basic principle: light passes through an opening and projects an image onto a surface inside a dark chamber. It can be a sensor, a film, or a piece of photo-sensitive paper.

The simplest version is the pinhole camera. No lens at all, just a pinprick-sized hole. Light squeezes through the hole, crosses over, and lands on photographic paper at the back of the box as an upside-down image. Make the box light-proof, load some photo paper in the dark, expose it, and develop it. Congratulations, you’ve made a photo with something you built.

The Beer Can Camera

One of the most extraordinary photographs ever made was taken with a beer can.

Artist Regina Valkenborgh made a pinhole camera from a single beer can lined with photographic paper, and left it pointed at the sky. It sat there quietly recording for eight years, capturing nearly 3,000 sunrises and sunsets in one continuous exposure. It’s still believed to be the longest-exposure photo ever taken.

This technique has a name: solargraphy. You make a pinhole camera out of a can (a beer can, a Pringles tube, any cylinder that’s completely dark inside). Tape photo paper inside of the can, seal it up, and leave it strapped to a fence or a pole pointing at the sky for weeks, months, or even years.

The sun burns its daily path directly onto the paper. It’s part photography, part patience, part time capsule, and it’s one of the most beautiful things you can do with literal garbage. A solargraph was even among the Astronomy Photographer of the Year’s shortlisted images for 2026. Among all those gorgeous photos taken with serious cameras and telescopes, something this simple can produce an awe-inspiring result. How cool is that?

“Did You Shoot That on a Potato?”

When someone insults a bad photo by asking, “What did you shoot that on, a potato?”, you can take that as a challenge.

Australian photographer Colin Lowe took this seriously and built a working pinhole camera out of a potato to win a bet. Guys at Corridor Crew also carved a potato into a camera, 3D-printing a little film chamber to cram inside it, then shooting a roll of film through it. The results were blurry, spooky, Slenderman-esque images. Completely imperfect, but quite impressive, knowing what they were shot on.

I’ve recently seen people making quirky cameras again. Someone in one of my Facebook groups posted a camera he made out of bread. Brendan Barry also did it quite a while ago. And it wasn’t just bread, he used the wildest items, including a watermelon, a squash, a pineapple, and a block of wood, to name just a few.

I’m not saying you should make a camera out of a potato… But hey, you could. The point is, making a simple camera is pretty doable, and you can actually produce photos with it.

Turn Your Room into a Camera

Speaking of Brendan Barry, his work is a great example of taking photos using the ancient technique of camera obscura. He has turned huge objects into working cameras – from his own shed to Custom House in Exeter, UK.

You can make a camera from your room and take photos with it, too. Black out a room completely using cardboard or tinfoil. Poke a small hole in the covering over one window, and the entire world outside will project, upside down and in full color, across your walls. You can even add a gadget like BonfotonUp to make the projection show upright (I got to test it, I enjoyed playing with it).

To take photos with your room (how weird does that sound?), you’ll need a piece of photographic paper and something to hold it in place. Then, you’ll project the image onto it. You can use a piece of cardboard to make a “lens cap” for the hole. This way, you won’t expose the paper before it’s in place and before you get the image in focus. Expose your paper and then develop it in a dark room, aka your bathroom. You’ll need a developer, a stop bath, and a fixer.

A Pre-Cut Film Camera

You can make your own camera from pre-cut pieces. A few years ago, I got a Lomomod No.1 – a DIY camera kit made from sturdy cardboard. You’re supposed to assemble the pieces and add an included Sutton lens you can fill with various liquids. Feed the camera a 120mm film – and shoot away. It was an equally frustrating and fun experience for me. It’s not entirely DIY, but it does involve quite a lot of assembly on your side.

You can even hack it to shoot 35mm film, if you’re feeling extra playful.

What About Making a Digital Camera?

This is where it gets harder (and out of my scope). But this is still not impossible. Building a true digital camera from scratch means dealing with a sensor, a processor, and code. It’s a different kind of project, usually involving a Raspberry Pi and a fair bit of patience. It’s absolutely doable, but it’s electronics territory rather than I-found-it-in-my-kitchen-drawer territory.

Here are some links where you’ll find some of these DIY digital camera projects. If you have enough patience and skill, I say – go for it!

• Build this interchangeable lens DIY Raspberry Pi Zero camera
• Build your own matchbox sized DIY timelapse spy camera for only $30
• This DIY thermal camera is built around a Raspberry Pi and a $60 camera module
• The Paparazzo is a DIY interchangeable lens digital camera based off the Raspberry Pi and PI HQ Camera module
• Build your own DIY night vision camera with a Raspberry Pi
• Build your own instant camera with a Raspberry Pi and a thermal printer

So, Should You Build Your Own Camera?

Absolutely, yes. Making your own camera is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a photographer, because it strips the craft back to its absolute foundation. We sometimes need a break from XY megapixel-sensors, Eye AF, and tack-sharp modern lenses. There’s so much magic and satisfaction in simplicity, and in making something with your own hands.

Start with a pinhole camera from a tin or a cardboard box. Try a solargraph if you’re patient, or a room-sized obscura if you’re ambitious. And if anyone asks whether you really shot that on a potato, you can proudly say – Why yes, my good friend, yes, I did!

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