Well, the glue seems to have worked (Gorilla Glue is strange stuff — takes some getting used to).
Interesting feature this camera body has that I didn’t realize: there is a little dark-slide on the viewfinder window that allows you to black out that window, so you can make sure your camera is light-tight.
So now it’s time to run some film through it. It has a threaded tripod mount and will take a cable release, so all in all, this might be a good test.
I have realized the error of my thinking on the use of the viewfinder for composing: there’s no way to use that in any but the most crude fashion, as the image is just a blur. Better to have been able to use a lens and then replace it with a pinhole mount, but given the cost of this experiment, there’s not much room to gripe. If this works, I could see getting a body cover my one of my Nikon bodies (FM2, N8008)and trying this with one of those. The 8008 would be interesting as it has some timer capabilities (I think it can take up to a 30 minutes exposure) that lend itself to this.
Making the pinhole was problematic, given my tool options. I had two lens caps to work with, so drilling through the first one was not a disaster. A drill press would be the way to do this, specifically to ensure that one didn’t drill through the material, but left just a little left for the actual pinhole. A future approach would be to get a brass plate drilled out and attach that to the body cover, after drilling a good size hole in it.
I ended up drilling part way through on the second one, then using a heated straight pin to poke the hole through. For all intents and purposes, it’s done. Now to play with it and see what comes of it. Of course, I can use any kind of film as well, so I need not use black and white to start with.