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Writer's pictureLethicia Anglin

Studio practice: pinhole photography

Updated: Jan 16, 2023

On Tuesday afternoon, we made pinhole cameras out of cardboard boxes and old cans. The whole aim of this task was to produce some photos that was exposed to the sunlight and then develop them in the darkroom. Here are few photos of some of the pinhole cameras we made:





First I cut a square on the front of the camera in order to make a lens for it, then inserted tinfoil inside the camera to create the shutter. I then placed some photographic paper inside of the camera. After this process was done, I was able to create a pinhole within the foil and the cover the remaining camera with black tape to stop light from coming through. How this process works is when you go outside into the sunlight you are supposed to remove the black tape from the shutter and allow the sunlight to shine through the pinhole for a few seconds. This then converts the sunlight into the image that your camera is pointing to. On another note, my pinhole camera was actually made out of a beer can but I didn't manage to get a picture of it.


We took the pinhole cameras outside to take some pictures, i placed mine on a steady surface so that image would not be blurry. The aim was to make sure the picture was exposed to the sunlight for no more than 60 seconds. This is a picture of my first attempt:



first attempt

As you can see in the picture my first attempt failed, the picture was black and there was no image present. This happened because there was to much light exposed to the photographic paper, the inside of my foil lens wasn't taped with enough black tape so light was able to come through. I also timed it for 60 seconds which was too much light exposure. I did a second attempt and this is how it turned out:



attempt 2

Attempt two came out much better and the image was full of detail. I exposed the camera to 40 seconds of sunlight instead of 60 and it produced a much better finish. With that being said i also added more tape inside the foil lens to stop light from coming through.



results

Overall I was impressed with how my pictures turned out, it took 2 attempts to get it right but I am happy with the images. I decided to take pictures of architecture as it fit quite closely within my theme. The ghostly effect of this picture makes this picture look spooky, it almost looks like an Xray to me. Because I took these photos in a beer can it gave it a curved fish eye look which I thought looked interesting. I wish I had taken more of these photos of the building and maybe from different angles.

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