Photography - Pinhole Camera

A pinhole camera is a very basic and easy way of taking pictures. To make a pinhole camera I have to have a box or a tin and make it light proof. This can be done by painting the inside black to reduce the shine and light levels. By using gaffa tape to cover up and holes or potential gaps I can made the box compeltely light proof. The box needs to be light proof as too much light can completely ruin any pictures I attempted to take. I then made a small hole in the box using a pin (hence the name 'pinhole camera'), this is an aperture. An aperture is a hole in a camera which allows the light through to shine an inverted image through onto the film or in this case the photographic paper. A pinhole is used as the hole has to be small as photographic paper is very sensitive to light exposure and a hole to big will allow to much light in and the photo will just end up being black. A shutter is then made out of a flap of cardboard to cover up the hole when I do not want a photo to be taken, this will make sure that no light is exposed to the paper at inappropriate times.

I then had to measure the focal length, this was the distance between the hole and the photographic paper in the camera, mine was 60mm, this divided by the diameter of the pinhole (which was 0.8mm) gave me my 'F-stop'. In my case the F-stop was 75. This helped me find out how long the paper must be exposed to the light for a succesful picture to be taken. I also took some light readings and using these and my F-stop we estimated how long I would have to leave the shutter up to get maximum results. For me this was 25 seconds of exposure outside and 4 minutes of exposure inside.

I then had to take my pictures. This involved loading the photographic paper into my camera in a dark room, this was to make sure that the paper did not get ruined by exposure to light before the picture was even taken. I then had to choose my location, the first picture i took was outside, i set my camera up and then lifted the shutter and left it for 25 seconds before closing it again. I then took my camera back to the dark room to develop it. This involved leaving the photo submerged in 'developer' which was a chemical which developed the negative image, i then submerged it in 'fixer' to stop the image reacting to the developer and turning it brown. I then submerged the photo in the 'wash' which was just water, to clean the chemicals off of the photo. I then put the photo through a drying machine and i ended up with a negative image that lookd like this. I then Did this 2 more times inside,leaving the camera exposed to light for abour 4 minutes each time and i came up with these images of the atrium and myself.

I then needed to make these into positive images, i did this by scanning the photo's onto a computer and using the photo editing software 'photoshop' to invert the pictures and edit the contrast, brightness and colour of my photo's to my desire.

I ended up with these finished photo's of the college building from outside. I am happy with the what this photo turned out, you can clearly see it is a building but it also looks like it could have come from a horror film, as there is alot of dark and shadowy area's in it and the rest of the colours and the way the light merges into dark makes it look a bit ghostly.

This photo is the atrium from inside and on the second floor, this photo also has a dark and errie feel to it, the light makes it look slightly depressing and slightly prison like. The angle that the photo is taken makes it look like a very long room and kind of gives the idea that there is alot of space with not much going on.

This photo is of myself from inside the college building. This photo also looks slightly ghostly. You can clearly tell that it is an outline of a person but any defining and facial features are blurred so your not completely sure on who your looking at or what they look like. Also the way that only the area close to him is lit up gives more emphasis on the person in the photo and makes the enviroment seem more mysterious.