After the second term was finished, I was given an easter task which involved 3 different mini tasks to help me get started with the new project ‘Working with Light’ for 152MC.
The first task is to create a pinhole camera, which I have experience in already. I love working with pinhole cameras because you never know what you will get and you have to guess the shutter speed to gain the correct exposure, which is all trial and error. To understand how the pinhole camera works, you need to know what a camera obscura is which is explained in my previous post.
A pinhole camera is a simple camera that has no lens and a small aperture. With pinhole photography, you have to guess the shutter speed, these can vary from a few seconds to several hours depending on the lighting situation. I am going to make my own pinhole camera using a shoe box. However, there are many different things you could make a pinhole camera out of aslong as you follow the basic rules, know how to make them and you can adapt the process.
What you will need:
- shoe box
- Black card and/or black paint
- foil
- pin/needle
- black electrical tape
- scissors
How to create a shoe box pinhole camera:
How to diagram
Front view of pin hole camera
View of shutter
View of pinhole
View of the inside of the box and lid
Here are a few tips for when using your pin-hole camera:
- Make sure that the camera is completely blacked out (electrical tape works best)
- Either paint the inside of the box or cover with black card
- Use a piece of card to create the shutter
- Make sure you place the camera onto a flat surface so that the image is sharp
- The intensity of the light fades over distance, so the closer the photosensitive paper to the hole of the camera, the shorter the exposure time and visa versa.
- The further away the paper from the hole the more cropped out the image will be.
- Exposure times for outdoors vary between 10-30 seconds, indoors is a lot longer varying from 3 mins to a few hours.
Kerrie Caine 