For best sharpness you probably want about 0.25 to 0.35 mm. You’ll likely have a noticable difference at that size.

0.25mm is good if the pinhole-to-film distance is about 50mm, 0.35mm is good if your p-2-f distance is about 100mm. So trying to get a 0.3mm hole would put you in the right ballpark. It’s not a hard science, though. There are very specific formulae based on wavelength of light for specific colours and spread of spectrum and stuff…but they all have a big fudge factor to allow for taste.

Uh…executive summary: yeah, try a smaller hole 🙂

Remember to increase the exposure a couple of stops to compensate for the smaller hole, though. The great thing about colour print film, of course, is that you can make a dreadful exposure and still get a reasonable print out of it 🙂

It’s probably not far short of 1mm – maybe 0.75mm?? Is that too big?

But on a more practical note…

do you know approximately what the diameter of your pinhole is? (Magnifying glass and millimetre ruler lets you estimate a ‘close enough’ figure).

Sharpness – yes, I know what you mean. That always bothers me in my pictures…at least for a little while after I make my prints.
I can appreciate other people’s non-sharp images much more easily.

I think it’s because for my pictures I always have an image in my mind when I take it, and so when the actual print doesn’t match my expectation I can’t help but be disappointed. Looking at your pictures I don’t have that prejudice because I hadn’t seen the scene already.

I find that my own pictures improve after a few weeks and my mental picture has faded – maybe you should reconsider in a few weeks when you might better appreciate the impressionistic and expressionistic [*insert favourite pictorial style here*] aspects and pay less attention to the lack of ‘edges’. It may work for you too 🙂

I quite like the train station one too – as I said – it kind of has a feel of *old* photography.

Though yes, sadly you can see virtually nothing through the viewfinder, so you just have to set it up on the little mini-tripod thingy and hope for the best. Just a shame they haven’t come up sharper…

I do particularly like the picture at the train station. Great perspective lines.

Does the SLR let you get much chance to compose the shot, or is the image way too dark to be able to use the viewfinder?

Sadly not a digital pinhole camera – but if you could do that – that would be cool! >__<

As per ‘s instruction I converted my old 35mm SLR (the one with the dodgy exposure metre) into one.