Pinhole Photos

Our second assignment was to take a picture with a pinhole camera. A pinhole camera is a small camera made out of a tin can. It is round, has a tiny hole in it (hence the name pinhole), which light shines through. On the inside, there is a piece of photo paper that is exposed to create the picture. Below is a picture of the pinhole camera that my partner and I used to shoot with. The hole has to be very very small, which is poked inside the silver strip in the middle. 

This is the inside of a pinhole camera. The camera has to be completely light proof, which is why the inside is spray painted black. The paper inside is what is being exposed to light, which creates the final image in the end. It is quite a difficult concept at first, but it is amazing. The way pinhole camera work are you have to expose them to light for a long period of time (10-20 minutes average) for the photo to turn up on the paper. 

My friend Jocelyn and I both went outside and set our cameras up on a pile of books (to match our height), and sat as still as we could for 12 minutes. Above is the negative image that was produced. This image seems to create a panoramic effect, and this is caused because of the round can that was used to photograph. This image turned out really sharp, but my legs are a bit ghostly, because I kept moving them. We were quite lucky, because our first attempt at taking a pinhole photo was nearly perfect, and the product satisfied us both. 

After we developed our negative, we used it to create our final print. The finishing product had inversed the black and white colors, but kept the overall astonishing effect of the image. Everything turns out sharp again (Except for my legs which I mistakenly moved). To think that a picture like that is created from a tin can! Photography really is amazing. 

As usual, you need to use test strips to test the contrast and exposure for the final image. I used the test strip below to test everything. As you can see, the image exposure is way too high, so I needed to decrease the time. The ending product is glorious. Even the lightest or darkest photos can be altered (under light) to create the perfect final print.