Pinhole Cameras
Pinhole cameras are hybrids of camera obscuras and rayographs. They use the reversed image effect of the camera obscura to record it on a piece of paper: the same paper used in rayographs and photograms. On the right is my example of a pinhole photo of the concourse of my school. It originally had negative colour(black=white, white=black) and was upside down. It is still flipped, so everything in the picture is the wrong way around.
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How To: Pinhole Cameras
Ingredients:
- 1 thick cardboard tube with closable lid(Bisto can etc.)
- matte black paint
- duct/gaffa tape
- tinfoil
- light sensitive paper(buy this at a photography shop)
- paintbrush
- scissors
- stanley knife
- dark room
- pin
- stopwatch
- Paint the entire inside of the can black, so that absolutely no light can get in.(you might have to paint the outside black, too, if the cardboard is thin.)
- Cut a square roughly 2cm in perimeter in the side of the can.
- Cover the hole with tinfoil and tape it into place.
- Make a shutter out of tape and stick it on so it covers the tinfoil.
- Make a very small hole in the tinfoil, roughly where the middle of the hole would be.
- In the dark room, take off the can’c lid. cut to size the sheet of light sensitive paper and place it inside the can.
- While holding the shutter firmly over the pinhole, take the camera to the desired position.(be careful not to let any light in.)
- When the desired image is in view, open the shutter and using the stopwatch, time the exposure to light according to the size of the paper.(A5 is roughly 1 minute’s exposure time.)
- After exposure, take the camera(with the shutter closed.) to the dark room and take out the paper. You can then develop the photo like a photogram.