Pinhole cameras
My first week at college saw me stumble upon pinhole cameras. These devices are like nothing I have ever seen before! They work so uniquely compared to normal digital cameras. These devices are simple and easy to make. Pinhole cameras consist of easy materials like Pringles pots and normal everyday pots and tins. The shutter on my camera is the cardboard covering the aperture (pinhole) it controls how long light is exposed to the photographic paper. The aperture is the pinhole made in the foil; it is the opening where light travels. In photography this can be measured in crements. F-STOPS
The construction of my own pinhole camera
I made my own pinhole camera using a baked bean tin. I started by drilling a hole in the middle of the tin approximately 4cm by 3cm. I then painted the inside of the tin black to maximise the darkness. The paint also prevents light reflecting around the tin. I then dried the paint with a hair dryer to fasten up the process.
We then put foil over the hole we drilled. Once we had placed the foil in the right position we stuck 4 bits of strong tape to it so that the tape would not move under any circumstances. After that we pricked a tiny 0.8 mm pinhole in the middle of the foil. We also put a piece of cardboard over the lens (piece of foil) to stop the light coming through the camera when the photo paper was stuck in the tin.
I then put some dark black card over the top of my camera to maximise the darkness and to stop light entering it.
At the end of the making process I put 2 pieces of gaffer tape together and stuck a small piece of photo paper to the side of the camera that is parallel to the pinhole I made.
To take a picture with the camera I made you have to remove the card blocking the pinhole and leave it outside for 72 seconds outside and then shut the card board again for 5 minutes to get the best I could out of my camera.
The formula used to calculate my capture time
Distance from pinhole (mm)
In my case my calculation was 72 / 0.8 =90
Struggles I had with my pinhole camera
Their was plenty of struggles with my pinhole camera which made me end up using an already constructed pin hole camera. This was a disappointment as I really enjoyed and worked hard making my own pinhole camera.
My only problem was the fact that I got paint in the tiny pin hole I pricked through on the silver foil. This stopped a lot of light breaking through into the tin and printing on my photo paper. To fix this problem I would have had to de construct my camera and start again. This basically damaged and obstructed the aperture of my pin-hole camera so this was a major problem.
The problem is that my mistake was so major I had to use another camera. with using another camera i had to get used to the new one and it took me more calcualation and trails to get it right. in the end i just couldnt master the new camera and alot of my pictures were blurred and had black patches.
The dark room
The dark room is where we developed our pictures taken; it has different chemicals to help the pictures process of the photographic paper. There was rules in the dark room that we had to listen to fully or there would be harsh consequences but these rules where basically based around common sense. no eating or drinking, no running, no coats and bags, dry hands before using electrics and to use tongs when putting the pictures into chemicals. the chemicals called are developer ,stop and fixer. developer develops the image of the papaer. the water rinses it and stops the development process and finally the fixer neatens the photo up.
Evaluation
All in this entire project was fun! And I would love to do it again sometime in the near future although I would plan and take more time with my actions. thier was only one succesful picture in the end which i have posted above. considering the circumstances of my own camera breaking the the stress iof trying to sort it out , i think i have done a reasonable job and i fully understand how the pinhole camera works. although understanding how the pinhole camera works i am fully justified in myself by saying i would rather use digital camera's any day because they are less likely to malfunction compared to the pinhole camera.
