Project 2: Building a Pinhole Camera

Julie Soohoo (cs194-26-acb)

Building the Camera

For this project, I built a pinhole camera using a shoe box and DSLR camera. I covered on side with white paper to be the screen of the camera, and covered all other sides with black paper. I then cut out a hole for the camera lens and another for the pinhole cards on the side opposite to the screen. I then sealed all other possible openings with duct tape to prevent unwanted light from entering.

Outside and Inside of Camera

I used three different sizes for pinholes, 1mm, 3mm, and 5mm. I put each on a different card and covered the hole on the camera with a different one to test each.

Pinholes

In the final set-up I used some black cloth to block light from coming through the hole for the camera lens.

Final Camera Setup

Results

After testing all of the pinhole sizes, I found that the brightness of the image increases as the pinhole size goes up. However, at the same time, the image gets blurrier with the increased size. The greater brightness makes sense, as the hole is larger and therefore lets more light through, but since more rays from different directions hit the screen, the image gets blurrier. While the smaller pinholes are darker, the path the light can take is narrowed, so the image is sharper and cleaner. The findings are shown in the result pictures below.

Doe Library: Left to Right= 1mm, 3mm, 5mm

Campanile: Left to Right= 1mm, 3mm, 5mm

Extra Photos

These are extra photos taken with pinhole size 3 mm. I thought the 3 mm pinhole's balance between brightness and sharpness produced better images. Note: Sometimes I didn't have anywhere to set my camera so the images may have turned out blurrier due to unsteady hands.

Behind an apartment building and a brick building.

Sproul and Sather Gate

Note: The photos shown on this page have been cropped to remove some black borders, and resized, as the actual photos are rather large and blurrier than displayed here.