Pin+Hole+Photography

Pin Hole photography refers to a realm of photography where the camera being utilized does not have a conventional lens but has a simple small hole instead. Then hole needs to be quite small.The larger the hole, the softer the overall image will be. The depth of field of pin home photos is quite large but, since these images have an almost unavoidable softness, the product has a very large depth of non-focus. In class we punched holes into coffee cans to use them as the cameras. We calculated the size of the aperture by inserting various sized pins into the holes and then punching those pins though other surfaces and magnifying the hole to measure it. The f-stop is determined by dividing the focal length (the distance from the aperture to the film plane) by the size of the opening (usually about .4 to .8 mm). Cans were mostly either 100 mm or 150 mm in size creating f-stops ranging from 125 to 200. Instead of film, we exposed images onto photographic paper which can be easily loaded under a safe light and later developed in trays.

I also punched a hole through a spare Canon body cap then covered the hole with black wrap that had a pin hole to create a pin hole attachment for the Canon Rebel or the Canon 5D. The hole was very small so even though the focal length was shorter, I calculate it at about F-300.

There are many people working in pin hole photography. [|Flickr has an entire group of them.]

Amber's Pinhole Photo (inverted to positive):