Pinhole Camera

During our last class, we began photographing with pinhole cameras. My experimental model was constructed from binoculars. This was to allow my to see what effect a lens would have on a pinhole camera. The lens would allow me to magnify the image. In essence, this equipped a pinhole camera with a zoom lens, which contrasts the typical paradigm. 

Another advantage of this approach is that I was able to take two pictures without having to reload my camera. I could let the light enter from the front in the same fashion that a person would use the binoculars to see far. As I was saying, this would magnify the image. However, I could also let light enter from the eyepiece, as shown in the picture above. The black tape is to stop light from entering the pinhole until it's time to make the exposure. When it was time, the light would travel in the reverse direction as a person would look through the lens to the paper, which was positioned where the light would normally enter.  Using binoculars in the reverse sense minimizes the image. What should appear close to you instead appears to be far away. The field of view becomes wider, too. 

More experimentation is needed to achieve the correct exposure time. 

The image above shows a blurry rendition of the university library, which is the light-coloured shape near the centre. The dime-sized coin is for scale. 

This image is very small because binoculars minimize the field of view if you use them backwards. If you look closely, you can see a greyish part at the top and at the bottom of the circle. That's the clouds and the ground. Between the two, you can see a horizontal band of white. That's where there was sunlight peaking through above the horizon.  

I also shot with a more traditional design. That is to say I made a pinhole camera that doesn't have a lens. This model has a long depth of field. It was my hope that this would create very sharp images of distant subjects. 

I placed the metre-long tube in the shrubs and waited 10 minutes. This exposure time was too short to produce even a faint image so I increased my exposure to 30 minutes, but due to the soft fading light of  a January's late afternoon there was no trace of an image on the paper. 

I like using my pinhole camera because it makes me feel like I'm spying on people. 

I made a type of pinhole camera (albeit with an exagerated pinhole) in order to complete the photo of where the eyes cannot go. In this case, that would be a woman's washroom. The photo paper slides into the camera and the pinhole is basically a stencil. I keep this camera in my notebook as a souvenir. 

For my self-image, I showed the peace sign in order to give a new perspective on the current conflict in Ukraine. We learn in school that war is pointless. In fact, that's the entire story of World War I - war solves nothing. And yet here we today after a century of Remembrance Days and Never Agains cheering on the war in Ukraine. We never learn. 

To capture duration, I made a photo with a pinhole camera of my grandpa's watch and then I placed the image in my notebook. This is a colour version of what the watch looks like.