The Camera Obscura is an ancient optical device. In its most basic form it is, quite simply, a dark room with a small hole in one wall. On the wall opposite the hole, an image is formed of whatever is outside. This image is upside-down (inverted) and back to front (laterally transposed).
The size of the hole has a great effect on the picture that is being projected. A small hole produces a sharp image, which is dim, while a larger hole produces a brighter picture which is less well focused. This happens because light travels in straight lines, a property known as the rectilinear propagation of light. |
What Is Pinhole Photography?
Pinhole photography is a type of photography wherein there is no glass lens but instead only a tiny pin prick in an opaque screen of some sort. Where as a traditional camera has a lens that is composed of a series of optical elements that focus the scene before the camera onto the plane occupied by the film or digital sensor, a pinhole camera relies on some pretty nifty physics to achieve the same end with nothing more than a tiny hole in a light blocking material like plastic or metal. How does a pinhole camera work? A pinhole camera is the simplest camera possible. It consists of a light-proof box, some sort of film and a pinhole. The pinhole is simply an extremely small hole like you would make with the tip of a pin in a piece of thick aluminum foil. |