Small wonder the weather sucks, it's Sunday, after all.

World Pinhole Photography Day: what a bummer. Hope the weather gets better asap as I have too many pinhole cameras to test.

Now cut a little square aroung that spot.

Take an empty soda can and cut a small piece of tin out of it, roughly as big as the square hole you've just cut out of your box, and pierce a, hole through it using a pin. Do not make the hole too big, just enough for a tiny ray of light to pass through it, and try to make sure the edge is as cleas as possible. When making my pinhole, I usually put my aluminum piece of a rubber, as it makes it easier to pierce it without shaking the pin. Also, it prevents you from turning your table into a colander ;-)

Next, tape your piece of aluminum right on the hole in your box. Use black tape to make sure light will not leak in from its sides.

You will need: a pack of cigarettes, black electrical tape, a piece of aluminum (you can cut it out of an empty soda can), a pin, scissors and a marker... and instant film, of course!

First, take your ciggy pack and take out the plastic wrapping outside and the silver paper inside.

And cut it out.

Now you will need a piece of thin tin that  you can easily cut out of an empty soda can. Pierce a hole through it using a pin...

...And tape it on the pack's window that you've just cut out.

You can now start covering your whole camera with black tape to make it light-proof, except for the part that needs to be opened in order to put the film inside it. The black tape I use is quite large, so I decided to leave some extra tape already half-glued to the pack so that it was easier for me to completely wrap my camera with tape in the darkness after inserting the film.

By the way, you will have to put the film in with its back facing the pinhole [see picture below], but DO NOT insert film now: you can only do so in a completely dark room!

Before putting the film in, you will have to make some sort of a shutter, or light will leak in through the pinhole. I made mine folding a long piece of tape on itself. I put it on the front of my camera and taped it with a red tape band on top to keep in place and another smaller piece of red tape on bottom which keeps the shutter closed. To open it, I only have to lift the red tape and the shutter itself.

Now that your camera is almost entirely light-proof, you can finally put the film in it. This is the most difficult part of this project, so let's first talk about the issues and then let's (try to) find a solution.

As you already know, instant film comes in cartridges, and it's not easy to take single film "sheets" out of it. If you have an "Instant Back+":http://shop.lomography.com/it/accessories/camera-accessories/backs/lc-a-instant-back , no problem: you can build a DIY Instant Pinhole Camera like this one  and the Instant Back+ will do all the dirty job for you.

The camera we're building here does not require an Instant Back+, but this means that we have to use this camera with one film sheet at a time, as it would be quite difficult to build a mechanism that ejects a single sheet of film at a time.

So, basically, we will take the ten film sheets out of the cartridge in complete darkness, put one in the camera, take a picture, go back to our "darkroom", take the film out, press the white edges where the chemical stuff is to develop the picture, turn on the lights and finally see our picture.

This is going to take some time, and in order not to waste the film you will have to keep the nine sheets yet to be exposed in a light tight container and repeat the whole process each time you want to use this instant pinhole camera. 

Frankly, this would be quite a drag, especially if you consider that it takes more time to put the film into the camera than making the camera itself. That's why I decided to make more than just one camera, so that once I opened the cartridge I could already put all the ten film sheets in different pinhole cameras and have them ready to use.

So, here are two other instant pinhole cameras I made out of cigarette packs:

What happened to the other seven sheets of film from that same cartridge, you ask?

You can now only see a tiny black stain in the corner, but you cannot even imagine how my kitchen sink looked after the film started bleeding an awful lot black ink or whatever it was!

This photo was a total failure: I tried to develop it rolling a pencil on it a few times, so many times, actually, and pushing it so much that it started spilling that black thing.

Yet, the picture was still looking too pale, so I had the not-so-brilliant idea of heating the film using a lighter. The photo turned a bit purple at the beginning, then all of a sudden it turned all blue.

Thankfully, I was way luckier with the second trial:

This time the picture looks pinkish because right after taking my photo I put my pinhole camera in the freezer and left it there for a couple of minutes, and only then I took it to my darkroom to take the picture out and develop it. This time I pressed it more gently, rubbing the white parts with my fingers only, and the results are better, I guess... If you do not consider the fact that I was aiming at my dogs but didn't apparently managed to get them in my picture.

To make this revelation turn into a pinhole camera I used the afore-mentioned chewing gum box and can, black insulating tape, normal tape, a pencil, a marker, a pin, scissors and two rolls of 35mm film [an empty one and a "fresh" one].

First, I decided where my film would pass through the box. I marked two parallel lines on the front [representing very approximately the film]...

...And one per side, as tall as the film cartridge.

I mentioned you need two rolls of film. Actually, you only need one, the other one can be an empty cartridge, as the one I used. 

It is so wrecked because lately I've started developing film at home but have yet to master how to pull film out of the cartridge. Anyway, it doesn't really matter if your empty cartridge looks as bad as mine as long as you can still turn the spool, as you will have to tape about every inch of it soon.

Now it was time to put the film in my soon-to-be pinhole camera. Here I was faced with two options:

2. Shooting the film the other way and get redscale pictures.

As it's been a while since the last time I shot some redscale film, I decided to go for the redscale.

I inserted the film slotting the cartridge in into the chewing gum box and made the film go all the way through the other slit. 

I used black tape to hold everything still and to prevent light from leaking in.

I then taped the fresh film to the last bit still coming out from the old cartridge's spool.

I wound a bit to make sure the film inside was well stretched.

Next I covered the old cartridge and most of the box as well, except for the top of the cartridges [so that I could still advance/rewind the film] and the pinhole.

To advance the film, I put a paper clip in the top of the old roll's cartridge, making two full turns to advance to the next frame. I've read somewhere that one turn and a half is enough, but I personally prefer to make two whole turns.

Also, I keep by my side this helpful exposure guide which comes with the Diana Multi Pinhole Operator to help me determine exposure times: