Pinhole Cameras

Pinhole Cameras

The pinhole camera is the camera in the most simplistic form. A ray of light passes through the pinhole, or small hole, in the camera to form an image. Since the pinhole camera does not have a conventional glass lens, has to focus in a different way. The camera focuses by taking all light from the object to put it through a single point. In this way, the camera is able to produce a photograph with a reasonably clear image. However, the shutter of the pinhole camera is hand operated and can take a significant amount of time of exposure to take a picture. It can take as little as 5 seconds up to sometimes hours or days depending on the kind of picture that the photographer is looking for.

History Of The Pinhole Camera

The history of the pinhole camera is important to history in a number of ways, including photography as well as physics. Forms of the pinhole camera date back as far as the 5th century BC. Greeks wrote about natural pinhole cameras that they discovered from light traveling through the holes in wicker baskets and onto leaves. Aristotle and Eublid wrote about these happenings and also believed that we were able to see because light left our eyes. However, in the 10th century was when Muslim Mathematician, Ibn al-Haitham, published the idea that light entered the eye and that was what allowed us to see. Along with being a mathematician, he was a astronomer and philosopher and invented the first pinhole camera after seeing how the light came through his window shutters. He also improved upon his invention with the realization that the smaller the hole, the clearer the picture. Not only was Ibn al-Haitham credited with the invention of the pinhole camera, but also was credited with shifting physics from a philosophical to and experimental activity.

How To Make A Pinhole Camera

There are a couple of different ways to construct a pinhole camera. However, the most common way is to use an oatmeal box with a pinhole in the center. The pinhole camera is usually made by the photographer for a specific purpose. There are many different resources to use to make your very own pinhole camera. The pinhole camera is similar to the box camera, yet a bit simpler. You can find directions on the Internet and in books. There is not a lot of equipment needed to build the pinhole camera and provides a way to build a camera that is old fashioned, but still useful.