Flashing to the Past: Pinhole Cameras

     The second STEAM course of the Junior sequence is called Light, Sound, and Time. In the first unit we have been mostly focused on light. We have been studying the electromagnetic spectrum/different types of light and the way it gets to our eyes from the sun. We put our new knowledge to action by building pinhole cameras for this unit's action project. We made the cameras ourselves and developed them in a darkroom that our teacher assembled. We also did calculations to figure out how exactly our camera was. working and where to put the subject of our photograph for it to show up best on the paper. 

Camera, MD, 2022

I made my camera out of a shoebox but some of my classmates made theirs out of oatmeal containers. We painted the inside of our container black to make sure no light got in. If light got into the camera it would reflect and mess up the photosensitive paper. The camera by design doesn't use reflection or refraction, since refraction requires switching what the light is going through. We also used aluminum to make a pinhole, which we taped to a hole cut in the box. We also had to attach a flap over the pinhole so that when we want to stop the photo from developing we can cut the light. To test if any light got into the camera when closed, I recorded a video on my phone. 

I took two pictures with my camera, one of which was a test:

Test, MD, 2022

And one of which contained the bottle of tea that I used in my calculations:

Tea, MD, 2022

I took them both outside and they were exposed to light for five minutes. They didn't come out particularly clear which I think is because of the time the photos spent in the chemicals being a bit different than what it should've been.  When we finished taking our pictures we developed them in a darkroom made in a bathroom. The camera works because light is stopped from entering the box at all times with the exception of through the tiny pinhole when the shutter is open, so when it is the light for the image hits the photosensitive paper and creates the image. The darkroom works because while regular light from a lightbulb or the sun would ruin the photo if it hit the paper on accident, the red lightbulb used is a type that won't negatively impact the photo. 

Darkroom, MD, 2022

My pinhole was 3 inches in height and the distance from the paper to the pinhole was 7 inches. The hypotenuse was 7.6. Using these numbers and the height of my object I can calculate the ideal distance from the camera for my object to be. The bottle of tea was 8 inches tall, so using this I calculated that the distance from lens to object should be 11.66, the full distance from paper to object would be 18.66, and the hypotenuse from paper to object should be 20.6.

This project was very interesting, especially given the way that in the age of the mobile phone photos and cameras tend to be taken for granted. I learned a lot about the process that photos are developed which was fascinating given that I had previously seen videos of darkrooms on TV but hadn't ever seen one in person. I had a lot of fun with this project and am glad I got the chance to do it.