Overview

We built a pinhole projecter by covering the insides of a shipping box with black paper, except one side where we covered it with white paper ("screen"). Two holes were then cut on the side opposite to the screen: one for the pinhole opening, and the other for our digital camera. The dimensions of the box measures 66 x 41 x 18cm. We had to use a large box due to the minimum focusing distance of our lens being 45cm. We then took long exposure images with our digital camera to complete our pinhole camera. We obtained an pinhole size of 1.19mm from using the formula 1.9 * sqrt(f * lambda), so we chose pinholes sized 1mm, 3mm, and 5mm. Finally, we sealed the box by duct taping all edges and possible openings. We also duct taped the lens of the camera to prevent light from leaking in.

All images are taken at f/1.8, 30s, varying ISO @ 50mm.

Images

Unit 3 and Channing Parking Garage

Eshleman Hall

Conclusions

We noticed that there's an inverse relationship between pinhole size and image sharpness, as the 1mm pinhole provided the most detail. However, there is a consistent brown tint that is present in all of our images taken with the 1mm pinhole, so we selected the 3mm pinhole and took four additional images.

One trouble that we had was that our images had a streak of light, and we were unable to find the root cause. We tried taping every single edge and the camera again, taping the viewfinder of the camera, and mounting the camera upside down. None of these methods has solved our issue, as the streak showed up in the same place for all images.

Additional Images