The process of my pinhole camera.

How I made my pinhole camera

To build my pinhole camera I brought in a small cardboard jewellery box. On the side of my box I drew an outline of a small square (the size of a postage stamp). To cut this square out I used a knife I did this in order to create a hole for my lens.

After cutting this hole I painted the inside of my box, and the lid of my box black to ensure no light is inside the box. If light has entered the box whilst taking a picture apart from through the lens the light bounces off of the light colours and will ruin the picture, as it will not develop.

I stuck foil over the postage stamp size hole using duct tape and made a small hole in it using a pin. This created the lens.

After doing this I created my shutter by folding a piece of card over my lens and duct taping it down on one side, and the other side having some tape in order to open and close the shutter.

Following on from this I measured my focal length and divided by the size on the pin whole to figure out my aperture, my aperture is f93.

 I needed to find out my aperture length to know how long to take the picture for. Mine showed that approximately; outside I should leave mine for 30 seconds, and inside 4 minutes.

Loading my camera

Once finding out all of this information it was time to load my camera, I cut a piece of paper to the size of one side of my box, and stuck it to the edge of my box that is facing the pinhole. I did this in the dark room to make sure no light was on the photo paper.

How to capture and develop

Once loaded I took my camera outside to one of my chosen destinations.

I wanted to take a picture of 3 trees and the view in the background. I placed the camera on the grass to take the picture, I made sure it was still and the shutter was open for 30 seconds, once the 30 seconds were up I closed the shutter and took my pinhole camera strait to the dark room for developing. Once in the dark room I unloaded the camera by removing the photographic paper from inside, I then placed the photographic paper face down under the first tray of chemical solution the (developer) for 30-60 seconds. Once the time was up I removed the paper from the developer and put it into the stop solution

 For 10 seconds, then into the last tray (fixer) for just 30 seconds before going outside the dark room with the picture to check whether it had taken properly, if it was a good picture then it was then put back into the fix solution for a further 5 minutes. Once finished in the fixer for at least 5 minutes the paper then needs to be cleaned in water to ensure no chemicals are left on the paper.  My next few images I left for 30 seconds came out dark and black, this was due to the excessive sunlight, and the changing sun exposure. I then experimented with timing and changed my pinhole camera, because mine was far too small to get a decent picture. I was given another pinhole camera to use, and changed the exposure time to just 8 seconds after experimenting. My final photograph came out as a success and I was very happy with it. After every photo was finished I took the camera back to the darkroom to unload and repeated the developing process for every picture.

Scanning my photos

In order to scan my photograph I had to use my student card to log into the photocopier and ensure that the scanner automatically sends my photos to my e-mail. I placed the photos in the top left hand side of the scanner, and pressed the ‘send to myself’ button on the scanner, and made sure they were all JPG images by selecting JPG image on the format settings, and pressed go. I repeated this for all 6 of my photos.