Professional
Photo
Pinhole photography is lensless photography. A tiny hole replaces
the lens. Light passes through the hole; an image is formed in the camera.
Pinhole
cameras are small or large, improvised or designed with great care. Cameras have
been made of sea shells, many have been made of oatmeal boxes, coke cans or cookie
containers, at least one has been made of a discarded refrigerator. Cameras have
been cast in plaster like a face mask, constructed from beautiful hardwoods, built
of metal with bellows and a range of multiple pinholes. Station wagons have been
used as pinhole cameras – and rooms in large buildings. Basically a pinhole camera
is a box, with a tiny hole at one end and film or photographic paper at the other. Pinhole
cameras are used for fun, for art and for science. Designing and building
the cameras are great fun. Making images with cameras you have made yourself is
a great pleasure, too. But in serious photography the pinhole camera is just an
imaging device with its advantages and limitations, special characteristics and
potentials. By making the best of the camera's potential great images can be produced.
Some of the images could not have been produced with a lens.
Characteristics Pinhole
images are softer – less sharp – than pictures made with a lens. The images have
nearly infinite depth of field. Wide angle images remain absolutely rectilinear.
On the other hand, pinhole images suffer from greater chromatic aberration than
pictures made with a simple lens, and they tolerate little enlargement. Exposures
are long, ranging from half a second to several hours. Images are exposed on film
or paper – negative or positive; black and white, or color. Pinhole optics,
by the way, are not only used in photography. There is one animal in nature which
uses a pinhole for seeing – the mollusk Nautilus. Each eye has an accommodating
aperture – the aperture can enlarge or shrink. In this drawing, originally taken
from a book published by Arthur Willey in 1900, the eye is the oval opening to
the upper right.
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