Overview of pinhole photography

A pinhole camera is a very simple camera with no lens and a single very small aperture. Simply explained, it is a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light passes throughthe hole and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box onto photographic paper. The smaller the hole, the sharper the image, but the dimmer the projected image. A pinhole camera's shutter is usually manually operated because of the exposure times can be lengthy, it consists of a flap of some light-proof material to cover and uncover the pinhole ( I used duck tape). Typical exposures range from 5 seconds to hours and sometimes days. After you have exposed the camera for the proper amount of time you then cover the hole again to make sure no more light gets in. You then go into a dark room and take out your photographic paper, soak it in developer fluid then into a alkali fixer, leaving it in for about 2 minutes. Once this process has finished you soak it in water quickly and then leave it to dry. Once you have completed this process you should have your image appear onto the paper in a negative (if you dont it is because of over or under exposure). Finally you scan your image into the computer and invert it so that you are left with a positive image which you can edit or change how you like.

I made my pinhole camera with a round tight seal biscuit tin. I started by painting the inside of the tin black, about 4 coats so that there was no colour to interfere with my photograph. Next I drilled a hole into the side of the tin and filed off the jagged edges that appeared on the inside of the tin. Then I placed a thick tinfoil square inside the tin that covered the drill hole, using gaffa tape to keep it there. I then painted the tape black and poked a pin hole into the tinfoil which was my lens. Afterwards I went into a dark room to load the photographic paper into the tin; keeping it held up by a small sticky pad; closing the tin and creating a manual shutter (duck tape) before I left the dark room I was ready to take my pictures. However before you do this you have to work out your f.stop calculations by dividing the size of the pinhole by the length from the lens to the focal (in my case 165mm/0.8mm) using this you can work out how long you need to expose your paper for. The inside exposure time was considerably longer than the outside exposure time because inside there is less light that outside. I then took my images and used the process of developing my pictures. Ending up with two reasonably good photographs.