Overview

A pinhole camera is a light-proof box with a pinhole on one side and a screen on the opposite side. In this project, we constructed one and experimented with different aperture sizes.

Approach

In order to construct the camera, we first light-proofed a box. This would be simple if the box were to have no openings, but we needed to make holes for the camera lens and pinhole insert, which we addressed later. We used a single sheet of black construction paper to maximize light-proofing and made cuts along the box edges and pushed it into place. We then cut a hole nearly the size of the lens in the side of the box and stuck the lens in. The lens was about 9 inches from the screen. We then layered a few sheets of white paper for the opposite side to be the screen. We then manually focused the camera since the autofocus sensor would not work due to being outside the box. We believe the focus may have been moved as we moved the box, but there was no practical way to fix it once we sealed the box and the quality was still fine. We then sealed the remaining space around the lens with paper towel. We then cut another hole near the lens for the pinhole insert. We sealed the box and made our sub-millimeter, 3-millimeter, and 5-millimeter pinhole inserts and got our shots.

Camera Construction

Captured Images with [Aperture Size], [Exposure Time], [ISO]

The smaller the pinhole, the longer the exposure time needed to be to get sufficient light. We thought our medium aperture to be best considering lighting conditions and exposure time, so we shot the rest of the photos with it. An effect can be seen in many of the following photos (e.g., Evans Hall) in which the faces other than screen reflected some light and form more of the image. We like this effect and think it adds dimensionality—thus it is our additional bell and whistle.