Pinhole camera: cheapest place for Polaroid film?

My daughter is making a pinhole camera for her school science fair and based on her research, she decided on Polaroid film. (Its too much effort to start trying to develop film ourselves). Does anyone know an affordable source to buy it? I can't seem to find it for less than $15 for an 8 pack.

chaimav wrote:

My daughter is making a pinhole camera for her school science fair and based on her research, she decided on Polaroid film. (Its too much effort to start trying to develop film ourselves). Does anyone know an affordable source to buy it? I can't seem to find it for less than $15 for an 8 pack.

That can work, although it's a pain to handle the Polaroid film because you need it kept in the dark and then processed in the dark. Also, to demo it indoors, you'll get a really long exposure because film speed for Polaroids isn't fast and pinholes don't pass much light.

The other possibility is to make a pinhole obscura.

Let the pinhole project onto a sheet that you can view (or photograph).

The following was an obscura (with a lens) that I built for an open house in my lab. We used it to demo single-lens anaglyph capture, but the basic box would work for her too with a pinhole rather than a lens up front:

Front

Back

Basically, build your pinhole camera, but place something like tracing paper where the film would go and use a box to shade that for rear viewing -- now you've got an obscura. To capture an image from it, simply use a digital camera to photograph the tracing paper.

I described my much classier digital pinhole obscura here back in 2016: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3996328 . That design uses a 3D-printed structure for the pinhole obscura. The 3D-printed part designs are posted at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1515060 , which also has photos of the unit and images captured with it.

We have the handling of the film part down. In a dark room one person takes a film sheet out and gives it to someone else to load the camera. They then seal the rest of the package with tape.

The hardest part seems to be the rolling of the chemicals for development. The issue is securing the image in place. We have tried multiple methods and the one that worked the best was taping the image from the back and rolling it with a rolling pin.

Bowl of oranges.

chaimav wrote:

We have the handling of the film part down. In a dark room one person takes a film sheet out and gives it to someone else to load the camera. They then seal the rest of the package with tape.

The hardest part seems to be the rolling of the chemicals for development. The issue is securing the image in place. We have tried multiple methods and the one that worked the best was taping the image from the back and rolling it with a rolling pin.

Bowl of oranges.

What about passing it through a laminator with the heat turned off?