CS194-26 Fall 2017 Project 2

Building a Pinhole Camera

Anusha Syed and Imran Jami

Project Background Box Design Image Results Bells and Whistles

Project Background

In this project, we set out to build a pinhole camera from a shoebox and a DSLR with long exposure time. The basic intuition behind this was to create a pitch black environment and let in a very small amount of light (through the pinhole) and capture this light over a long exposure time in order to reconstruct the image. We calculated three different pinhole sizes in order to experiment with different amounts of light into the shoebox. The three sizes we decided to go with were 0.5mm, 3mm, and 5mm based on our calculations with the dimensions of the shoebox.

Box Design

We used a Nike Shoebox for our pinhole camera. Inside of the shoebox we decided to tape/glue black paper to create a darker environment for the setup. Additionally, we cut two holes on one of the sides of the shoebox for the camera, and one for the pinhole slots. On the opposite side of that, we taped blank white paper to serve as the canvas for our photographs. We also taped any holes in the shoebox to avoid any light while we took the photos.

Here are a few photos highlighting our box design:

Image Results

As we experimented with all of the different pinhole sizes, we noticed that the 3mm size seemed to create the best images in terms of clarity and color. The reason for this is because this pinhole size allowed an optimum amount of light. Compared to 0.5mm, which didn't allow enought light and the 5mm which allowed too much light. We can see this in the corresponding images, because the 0.5mm images are blurry and the 5mm images have a blue hue (probably from the tape we used in our design).