CS 194 Project 2

Building a Pinhole Camera

By Brian Aronowitz (cs194-26-aeh) & Stephanie Claudino Daffara (cs194-26-adv)

In this project we got to build a Pinhole Camera. This is a piece of machinery which is a completely opaque box with a single pinhole on one side, and a white screen on the opposite side inside the box. Light enters the box through the pinhole, and creates an inverted projection onto the opposing wall. Normally, photosensitive film is used on the backwall to capture images, but we used a camera, inserted on the same side as the pinhole, to capture the images.

Constructing the box

We started the construction process by looking at the specs of our DSLR camera. Our camera focused at an ideal 1.5 ft (.7 m), so we used that to establish the length of the box. We made the box is a perfect cube, 1.5ft x 1.5 ft x 1.5ft. We laser cut the side pieces, and spray painted the insides black. Next we assembled them using woodglue, with electrical tape around the outsides of the box.

After the box was finished, we calculated the ideal pinhole size for our camera. Given f = the distance between the pinhole and the screen (1.5 ft) and lambda = the wavelength of light the pinhole size should be:

1.9 * sqrt(f * lambda)

Our calculations resulted in a .9mm hole being the ideal pinhole, which we rounded up to 1 mm. We also created a set of .5 mm and 3 mm pinholes to experiment with.

Pinhole add-ons

Front shot of box

Modular pinhole system

Full shot of the box

Stephanie putting camera into pinhole box.

Shot of the backpanel of the box, which captured light.

Because, like, design.

Scene 1

3 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 2 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 2 sec

ISO: 6400

0.5 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 2 sec

ISO: 6400

Since the images for the 1mm and 0.5mm pinhole were too dark I adjusted the settings of the camera and got a better image.

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4.5

shutter speed: 2 sec

ISO: 6400

0.5 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 2 sec

ISO: 6400

From here on I will be only showing the images with the settings adjusted in the best way given the pinhole size.

Scene 2

3 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 15 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 20 sec

ISO: 6400

0.5 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 30 sec

ISO: 6400

Extra Images

The size of the pin hole that worked the best depended largely on the environment and amount of light available. If we felt that it was sunny enough we used the 1mm pinhole, but once there was a bit of shade, 3mm worked better. Also, in hindsight, all of our image are a it noisier than we'd like, and it one main cause of this was the ISO that we left at 6400 (which is super high!!) for all of the images. With a little extra time we would probably try to take some more pictures by using longer exposure time and a much smaller ISO.

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 5

shutter speed: 8 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 5

shutter speed: 30 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 5

shutter speed: 5 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 30 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 15 sec

ISO: 6400

3 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 20 sec

ISO: 6400

3 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 30 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 1 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 4

shutter speed: 30 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 5

shutter speed: 5 sec

ISO: 6400

1 mm pinhole

f-stop: 5

shutter speed: 25 sec

ISO: 6400

Stereoscopy

We attempted to create a stereoscopic image by using the following two pinholes that we laser cut. The image on the left shows our pinholes, and the image on the right demonstrates the stereoscopic technique.

We took two separate pictures that ended up looking a little worse than we expected. The camera probably shifted a bit between takes.

Here are our light paintings, done on a DLSR, iso1500, with 30 second exposure.

Donnie darko.

This one scared me.

Picasso would be proud.

Thanks for Watching!