Project 2

Building a Pinhole Camera

Nancy Li, Julia Liang, Vincent Escueta

Overview

We designed and built a pinhole camera, a dark box with a pinhole on one side, and a screen on the parallel side. Reflected light from the environment shines through the pinhole, and is focused onto the white screen in the box. The result is an inverted image of the environment on the white screen. To capture the resulting image, we used a Canon Rebel t3i with a long exposure time.

Supplies:

• Shoebox
• Black paper
• White paper
• DSLR camera (Canon Rebel t3i)
• Black tape
• Thumbtack and paperclip (for poking pinholes)
• Soda can
• Box cutter

The Process

1. Punch pinholes of varying sizes into small squares of black paper. We chose 0.5mm, 3mm, and 5mm.
2. Line the insides of the the shoebox with black paper, but cover one of the sides with white paper. This will be your screen where your images appear.
3. On the opposite side, cut two rectangles (one much larger than the other) into the shoebox. One will act as the placeholder for different pinhole sizes. The second larger rectangle acts as a placeholder for the digital camera's lenses.
4. On the same side, cut an indentation in the lid so that your rectangles are not covered by the shoebox lid.
5. Cut your soda can and flatten it into a metal sheet. Out of the metal sheet, cut a circle. The lens of the camera should fit snugly into the circle, so that no light is let in. Cover the metal piece with black tape (so that the metal doesn't reflect light) and secure it into your larger rectangle on the side of the shoebox.
6. Place the pinhole paper into its placehold. Focus your camera, set its exposure to 15-30 seconds, and fit it into its own metal placeholder through the shoebox. If necessary, fold a black t-shirt or cloth snugly around the camera to make sure no light leaks into the shoebox.
7. Go outside and take pictures! Try out different angles, subjects, and pinhole sizes.

Scene 1

On Tuesday 9/12 at noon, we took these photos from the Information school steps looking onto the Campanille.

Scene 2

On Thursday 9/14 at noon, we took these portraits of Nancy and Julia from the apartment roof.

We found that decreasing the pinhole size increased the sharpness of the image; however, it also made the image significantly darker since less light is let in overall. Between the focus and the exposure, we decided that the 0.5mm pinhole created the sharpest and thus the best images.

Additional photos with 0.5mm pinhole

Bells and Whistles

We tried light painting with glowsticks with some of our friends!