You guys know I talk about how important good lenses are, right?  Like all the time.  Well take a look at this picture and see if you can tell me what kind of glass I used…

Ah ha, trick question.  I used no glass at all.  I took that photograph with a pinhole camera.  Or rather, a modified body cap on my 5DII.

Basically you drill a hole in the middle of a body cap. Then cover the hole on the inside of the cap with a piece of foil. Then make as small of a hole as you can in the middle of the foil with a pin.  Stick it on your camera and shoot.

This is actually the most simple a lens can possibly get. Basically it goes all the way back to the camera obscura.

Here are more detailed instructions for and a much better built example of what I did.  The smaller and more perfectly you make the hole the foil the better, but I just played until it worked.  Actually I found those instructions after I had, through a number of lesser iterations, come to the same configuration myself independantly.  Like I said though, his is much better.

I’m certainly not going to give up my L glass, but it was fun to experiment for an hour or so.