The absolute cheapest camera possible is a pinhole camera. All you need is something thin with a tiny hole in it. That hole is your “lens” and you can project the picture anywhere you want.

If you’re taking pictures of something really bright, like the sun, you can just project it willy-nilly. Sometimes it even occurs naturally. Otherwise, you’ll also need a light-proof box, and some film or something to expose.

On the other hand, digital SLRs are some of the more expensive cameras you can buy. Now, thanks to Photojojo, you can spend an extra $50 on your dSLR and turn it into a crappy pinhole camera!

Yes, it’s a lens cap, but sans lens. It has a tiny pinhole in it that’s not really a pinhole — they say it’s a laser-cut hole, but covered with clear plastic, so absolutely no dust can get through into the inner workings of your camera. And it’s $50 here, Nikon or Canon.

The photos it manages look to be about what you’d expect from a cheap pinhole camera, though they are gigantic mega-pixel images. Here are a couple of images that the company provides:

See? It’s cool that they’re 2000×3000 pixels. But as actual photographs, they’re not really that, um, good.

Plus, this pinhole lens looks exactly like the kind of thing you could make at home, and save yourself $50. Perhaps you could even make it out of wood?

(via Gizmodo)