Pinhole Camera Project

The purpose of this project is to explain how to build and use a Pinhole camera. It's also to see how much I understand how pinhole camera's are built and used.

Materials for a Pinhole camera

• Empty oatmeal box
• Aluminum foil
• Black construction paper
• Tape (masking or electrical)
• Straight pin
• Ruler
• Marker
• Black paint
• Photo paper
• scissors
• A black bag (film transfer bag of some kind)

How pinhole cameras work Pinhole cameras work by having a piece of photo paper inside a light tight space. The photo paper is exposed to light when the shutter is opened to allow it to take a slowly processing picture. In order for a picture to turn out it could take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour, and the pictures turn out backwards because of how the light rays come into the small hole used to allow light inside the camera. The picture at right shows how the camera flips around the images coming into the camera.



How to build a Pinhole camera

1. Take the empty oatmeal box and paint the inside with the black paint throughly.The bottom side of the lid should also be painted black.
2. Once it dries flip it over so it's upside down. You can use a ruler & marker to find the middle, or just eyeball it. Either way, where ever you decide the middle is is where you should use the straight pin to poke a small hole in the bottom of the box.
3. Now you need to make the shutter, which is pretty easy to make. All you need to do is cut the black construction paper so that it covers the hole, and then some. Then you tape it to the box so it will cover the hole.
4. Now you just need to cut your photo paper so it'll fit inside your camera. The paper can't be exposed to light, so using a black bag to put the paper inside the camera might be a good idea.
5. Go take pictures!

How to use a Pinhole camera

1. After you've placed the photo paper in the pinhole camera you need to find a picture you'd like to take.
2. Depending on the lighting you can determine the time you should have your shutter open. Which exposes your photo paper to the light. If it's a sunny day/bright area, less time will be needed to take a picture then a dark area. You can experiment with different times to figure out what's best for your camera. My group and I did 6 minutes on a cloudy day, and 2-4 minutes on sunny days.
3. Once you find what you want to take a picture of you should find an area where the camera can be held still for a few minutes. An example would be setting it on the ground or setting it in your lap.
4. Now all you need to do is make sure the camera will be still and open the shutter. Having a stopwatch or phone with a timer would be nice, as you can keep track of exactly how long your photo paper has been exposed.
5. Once your exposure time is up, close the shutter and either go into a dark room or use a bag like the one pictured above to remove your photo paper. The paper should be wrapped in foil to keep light from coming in.
6. Now you can develop your pictures to see how you did. If the picture turns out dark you had your picture exposed for too long. This could be from either the camera itself not being dark enough on the inside, or too long of an exposure time. If it turns out white then the photo paper wasn't exposed for long enough, your camera is too dark on the inside or your not allowing enough light to get in when you expose the paper. This could be from having too small of a hole.

How the pinhole project went for my group:
My group, which was Chelsea, Alex and myself, didn't have a very hard time building the camera. The only problem we had was centering the hole in the bottom of the camera and having it small enough. At first we made a hole with a pencil, which we later decided was too big. So we had to cover that up and find another point close to the middle. We ended up using an earring to make the second, and well, third holes. The second was too off center, but the third was just right. Other than that, the picture taking was a little complicated for us. We thought we were doing okay, and that our exposure time was fine until the pictures came out. Which, none of them actually showed any form of image. On the other hand, our picture ideas were cool, well besides the first. Our second picture was of Chelsea walking, but every 2 minutes she'd take a step until our exposure time was over with. While our third one was Alex sitting on the football bench out on the field. In that picture he also moved around in the background too so we could see if it would somehow capture him walking as well as sitting on the bench.