CS 194:-26 Image Manipulation and Computational Photography, Fall 2018

Building a Pinhole Camera

Keeping it simple:

We made a hole on one side of a dark box to make an image.

We sealed off a cardboard box spray painted the inside black and spray painted some index cards black.

We used a pin to poke different size holes in each index card.

We taped a white piece of plastic on one end of the box.

On the opposite end, we made a cut out in the box so that we could place index cards along the hole to interchange pinhole sizes.

Near this hole, we cut a circle that would fit the lense of our camera so that we could record the image produced on the white plastic.

We tested multiple sizes of holes and took many pictures.

When we used larger holes we let more light in and got brighter but blurrier images.

When we used a smaller hole we got images that needed more time to allow enough light for an image to develop, and, as a result, the images would be sharper but get too bright as detail was lost with the long exposure.

Bells and Whistles:

We used Pepper's ghost effect to create ghosts in some images. We did this by laying a piece of clear plastic at an angle outside the pinhole and then below, out of view placing an object so that the object would be slightly reflected off the plastic into the pinhole lense.

As such we were able to make a ghost of a scuba diver with a camera and take a selfie with him.

We did some night coloring with a flashlight and a long exposure.

We made stereo images by flipping a card with a hole on one side. We took a shot with the hole on the left and a shot with the hole on the right.

We used a longer box to get a greater focal lengh for our images.