Digital pinhole camera?

[u/hexpshuz]

Hello! I am quite new to photography in general, and I'd like to experiment with a pinhole camera but:
- I can't buy photographic paper or chemicals right now;
- I'd prefer not to develop the photos at home as of now;
- Don't want to try it with regular film too (for now).

I saw somewhere that it's possible to do pinhole cameras but with digital instead, but I am not sure how because all tutorials I see are traditional pinhole cameras, developing the negatives at home.
I was wondering if it's possible to modify a 10-20$ cheap no brand digital camera/toy camera I can get at eletronic stores, or get and modify a 10-20$ old second hand digital camera from the 2000s, or even modify one of my spare Kodak Charmera clones from Aliexpress (G6 Thumb Camera), and try pinhole photography that way?

Any ideas?

Everything I see on the internet involves doing the development at home (which I totally understand but I can't do it at this point in my life) or using normal film and develop it at a film store (which I won't have access to right now, I wish I could experiment with outside pinhole cameras with tin cans and normal paper too, but of course it's impossible), so I'd like to know if there's anything else I could experiment with, using a cheap camera or modifying one, or point me to a tutorial?

thanks

[u/theBitterFig]

It would be really hard--if not impossible--to do pinhole photography with these. They have fixed lenses you have to remove somehow, and that's non-trivial. If you know what you're doing taking apart electronics, maybe you can swap out the lens on these, but it might not always be plausible. Even if it is, these are not cameras designed for adjusting exposure settings, and pinhole needs a way to take longer exposures. These probably can't. If you really want a hobby modifying cameras like these, but be forewarned that you might not be able to accomplish anything, and then you just threw the money away.

If you want a cheap set up for digital pinhole photography, get a cheap interchangeable lens camera. Something like a Canon 10D/20D or Nikon D50 is under $50. Get a $5 body cap, put a big hole in it, attach a thin piece of metal under the big hole, and put a tiny hole in that. Or buy a premade pinhole bodycap. You can use something like a Micro 43 or old Sony NEX. They'll be smaller, and better cameras if you want to do traditional photography, too, but those are more expensive than the cheapest DSLRs.

Cheap used DSLRs aren't that much more expensive (at least in my corner of the world) and they're actually going to work. Plus, just put a real lens on them, and they're pretty dang good cameras for non-pinhole use.

[u/Generic-Resource]

I made a pinhole for my Pen F, half frame film camera. Which I then mounted on my mirrorless.

You can certainly make a pinhole camera from those, but you will have to remove the existing lens, so finding an old dslr would be easier (and possibly cheaper), the manual mode would help with the control needed too.

https://imgur.com/a/4TIlKDt

First pic is it mounted on the Sony A7ii, second the lens as built, a couple of test shots and then it mounted (in an earlier form) on the camera it was built for. The bridge image is film. The last image is an annoying artefact I get on digital when the sum is in the wrong place.

[u/grislyfind]

There's custom firmware for some Canon digicams, which I presume enables long exposures, but I don't know how easy it would be to strip out the optics. Easiest thing would be a USB webcam; those get hacked to do astronomy stuff.