Digital Pinhole Photography

Pinhole photography is essentially the beginning of all photography.  You can read more about pinhole photography, and more of the history of photography here:

http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/stilphotography.htm

The sensor in a digital camera is essentially the film cell of the old cameras, so I thought it would be fun to combine the grainy, organic quality of pinhole photography with the clean, artificial look of digital photography and see what we get. 

 

First up is my nifty knock off canon lens and body cap.  I got mine off Amazon, but you can pick these up pretty much where ever you can get camera equipment.

 

I drilled out the center (or as close to it as I could, I just eyeballed it) and taped some aluminum foil to the other side.  I found using aluminum foil gave the best result for me.  A hole in electrical tape had to be too big to function the way I wanted, and resulted in real soft photos.  I was able to have a smooth, sharp, small hole with the aluminum.

 

 

And here is the cap on my camera:

 

 

 

The following are some test shots I did.

Sunset:

Bunch of junk in my garage:

My wall of wrenches:

Here's a picture of my walkway to show how the sharpness is pretty even at different distances

And here it is edited a bit so you can actually see.

The original being so dark was my fault.  You'll shoot in manual, because there's nothing for the camera to control as far as lens.  ISO is your friend shooting pinhole, or at least my friend since I'm not using a tripod.  Even in bright daylight I seem to need a couple hundered ISO to keep the 1/80-100 shutter speed so the image isn't shakey.  But a slow shutter hand held could give you some cool effects if thats what you're going for.

Well thats it for this entry.

Get out there and take some photos!  I don't get out nearly enough.