Parker, the hardest part of using one of these cameras is loading the film without exposing it to any light. But you can 'play' with one without any film by covering the back with translucent paper (tissue paper, even wax paper) and covering the whole back end with some sort of fairing light tight hood, big enough to allow you to get your head inside. You'll look like the old photographer who used flash power for the 'flash!'
The thing works on the principle that if one can make the hole small enough, only one ray of light from every part of the scene can make it to the film/viewer. Of course, most pin holes are considerably larger than that, but the eye can make some phenomenal adjustments in things like this. But that extremely limits the amount of light so the exposure can take hours! It will also be difficult to see the image on the screen unless the scene is extremely bright and your eyes have time to adjust to the darkness in the hood.
And don't be surprised if/when you observe the 'picture' on the screen. It will be upside down and reversed left to right. That's the result of the limited number of light 'rays' coming into the 'camera.' Something in the lower, right-hand part of the scene will end up in the upper, left-hand part of the film/screen. Just don't get dizzy inside that hood!
After all this work, you can see why photographs jumped at the chance to start using real lens with much more light and still could focus on the film/screen! Pictures in minutes instead of hours!
And now we're upset if we have to wait more than a few seconds!
