I was not the kid who built models when he was young, I didn’t have the patience for it. Why buy a box of plastic pieces that make a toy car, when you can just buy a toy car? I did have a few years of model rocket flying, due solely to the fact that the event included fire and sometimes an explosion. So when the folks from Brooklyn 5 & 10 sent me a Sharan SQ-35 Pinhole camera kit, I knew I would need a second set of hands. I had to call in a ringer on this one- my Father. My Father isn’t the normal Dad that most kids on my street had, he was a Senior Research Associate with the Engineering Physics lab at E.I. duPont. He traveled quite a bit, working throughout Europe and Japan, which provided my childhood time in Nue-Isenberg, Germany. By the time he was my age, he was building and patenting things like this. So a camera kit should just be a relaxing evening, right?

Actually, yes. After a nice dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant, we moved from the home office to the big farmhouse table in the living room and set up shop. At first glance the instructions look a tad daunting, but after you’ve read them once or twice, you realize they are just very detailed, and that is a good thing. My Father was very impressed with the engineering of the kit- his first thought was ‘what does the die that cuts this kit out look like, and how many did they have to make before they got it right?” I am going to say a few. Whoever designed this camera was a genius, but that person has a twinge of masochist as well. It’s an amazing camera, but you have to build it first.

The build.

I am going to attempt to walk you through our build, and in the process add a few tips that will make it a bit easier for you when you settle in to create your own Sharan. The kit asks the you have scissors and a black marker on hand, but I am going to add a few items to that. Before you start, make sure you have a roll of ½ wide double sided tape, a few fresh black Sharpie’s in various sizes, and grab a cutting board and a new x-acto knife. When removing the parts from the card, I found it easiest to lay it flat and slice the nubs with the knife rather then risk bending the card or twisting the individual pieces.

The kit really is a work of art in itself, and as you progress along the build you realize you are following in the footsteps of photographic history. The first thing you do is build the shutter assembly, with the provided apertures. Once finished you will have the choice of either soft or regular focus, and a separate shutter setting for full sun or the SP filter. Provided with the kit are two sheets of adhesive: one sheet of pre-cut double sided tape, sized exactly for your needs, and one sheet of black tape to hold the cameras sides together. The x-acto will come in handy removing the little pieces of double sided tape, but after a bit of frustration getting both sides of the tape exposed, I grabbed a roll of double sided tape and just used that. Quicker, easier and stronger. Shutters built, on to the film box.

Make sure you blacken all interior sides of the openings…

You are now on to one of the three main parts of the camera itself, the back cover. No surprises here, you simply apply the double sized tape to each side, creating the four walls of the box, and then fold them up and tape the corners together. This part deserves mention for an impressive piece of engineering. Each corner of the camera’s walls has a ‘rabbet’ or a shelf that you place the other wall against so that you are not just taping two pieces of board together, but instead making a very strong joint. This in turn makes the seam exponentially stronger, and with the first section built- you are already impressed with the torsional rigidity of the camera.

The Back Cover, with plastic film plane insert…

Now a pause and you are onto the second of the three major parts, the film folder. This box houses the reels to hold the film, and the shutter assembly. The reels and winders come in a plastic model form that will look familiar to those who built model cars as a kid. Snap apart the winding knobs, spools and they will assemble with a solid click to form the take up spool and rewind system. No button to depress on the rewind, it’s simply wind one way to shoot, wind the other knob to pull the film back into the canister.

The film folder, like the back cover folds up and is secured at each corner with black tape. Then the assembly for the shutter slides in, and pinhole lever is secured. Take care to use your black sharpie to darken all of the areas around the shutter and aperture, to help reduce light reflecting off of the inside of the cardboard. A small piece of foam rubber blocks the light leaks above the shutter, and it to is secured with some two-sided tape.

The Film Holder showing the square mask…

Now onto the front case of the Camera. Once again a flat die cut piece of black cardboard creates half of a rectangular box. Flaps on each side fold into themselves to create the ‘rabbet’ on each corner, and then the corners are secured with black tape. Now a few tricky parts as the film folder and film spools are attached to the front case. A handy spacer is temporarily placed in to square the box up as you tape the sides. On next is the shutter lever, and then folding up the front of the camera. At this point you really begin to see the entire project take shape, it looks like a real camera. There is a shutter, film spools, and a façade with an illustration of a camera. Once you tape the rewind and advance dial caps onto the knobs, you simply slide in the back cover from part one, and that’s it. Like a bizarre French movie, the creation of your Sharan Camera seems to be a strange sequence of little elements, and then poof- its over.

The Finished Camera

With a few breaks, we estimate that it’s a two and a half hour job if you are careful and patient. You could probably do it in less then two hours, but be prepared to stop and marvel at the progression of the build. Each part that you tape together forms an element of the camera- an element that lies in every camera that you use. There were several “oh that’s how that works…” moments. In the end, you have a very solid, very attractive little pinhole camera.

For those with the desire to shoot pinhole, and who like building models, this would be a great addition to your collection. At less then $30, the quality of materials makes it a relative bargain. A great gift for the camera lover in your life, and an even better gift for someone who wants to learn a bit about how we made it from the Camera Obscura all the way to the high-tech SLR’s of today. And a great Father-Son project, even if you are my age.

In part three, we’ll take a look at some of the images from the Sharan, and give you a few pointers on how exposure and winding the film…