Building a Pinhole Camera
15-463: Computational Photography
Author: Stephen Tawa (stawa) and Bill Ge (bge)
For this assignment we made a pinhole camera and experimented with different aperture sizes.
Our box was slightly larger than a shoebox. It was mostly lightproof but there were a few spots that required duct tape. The camera and pinhole were close to the center of their face. To use different aperture sizes, we cut a large (> 5mm) hole in the box and covered it with black construction paper containing the pinhole. The formula 1.9 * sqrt(f * lambda) suggests a pinhole size of .6mm, so we tried .6mm, 2mm, and 5mm.
Some pictures of our setup:
Scene 1, .6mm pinhole:
Scene 1, 2mm pinhole:
Scene 1, 5mm pinhole:
Scene 1, .6mm pinhole:
Scene 1, 2mm pinhole:
Scene 1, 5mm pinhole:
The main difference between smaller and larger pinholes was how to capture an appropriate amount of light. With the smallest pinhole, we needed to use very long exposure times (usually 60 seconds). With the medium and large holes, we had to shorten the exposure time to prevent the images from washing out. 15 to 30 seconds usually worked. If the largest pinhole was pointed directly towards the sun, it was necessary to create shadows. Otherwise, the image would become washed out even with short exposure times. As expected, the smaller pinholes generally produced sharper images.
Some more images:
It was harder to create proper lighting conditions inside. For the last image, we used a flashlight to generate additional light. These pictures all used the .6mm pinhole with a 60 second exposure time, since this resulted in the sharpest images.
Fail attempt at stick figures...
Alec chillin with a stick figure
KAMEHAMEHA
This is how I travel home
Here is the new setup with a lens:
Some results with the lens: