Pinhole Photography

Taking pictures with a pinhole camera is like peering through a chink in a wall and looking into the past. The resulting photos look as if they have been taken at least a hundred years ago, which makes sense considering Leonardo Da Vinci was the first to use the pinhole concept with his "Camera Obscura." The basic idea is that light travels through a tiny hole and casts an image, backwards and upside-down, onto the negative. Exposures range from 30 seconds to nearly 2 minutes depending on the size of the hole.

To make this historic camera you can use an oatmeal box painted black, inside and out. The lens is a piece of aluminum pie plate pierced with a needle and taped over a 1.5 square inch hole in the side of the box. I use black and white photographic paper as a negative, which is placed inside the box (in total darkness) to fit the curve of the wall opposite the lens. The emulsion side faces the hole. It is this curve that gives the extreme wide-angle look to the pictures. Use a heavy piece of black paper secured with rubber bands over the lens as your lens cap. After setting the camera in position for the picture, with a rock on top to keep it steady, remove the lens cap for 30 seconds or so. You will need to try a few times to find the correct exposure.

Back in the darkroom, develop the paper negative in the normal manner (there are many good books that describe this process in detail) using black and white chemistry. Sandwich this negative with another piece of paper (emulsion to emulsion with the negative on top) and shine a light through it to produce the positive, which then must be developed like the negative. You can also scan the negative on a flat-bed scanner and create the positive in Photoshop. If done correctly the result is a photograph similar to the ones you see here.

There you have it, cheap and easy photographic thrills. Amateur photographers quite often ask me what kind of camera I use and how much it costs. They are impressed with expensive gear. I tell them it doesn't matter what equipment you use, a photographer can make a good picture with an oatmeal box.

I admit I still have a few bugs to work out here. With a little refinement and experimentation I could clean up some of the extra lines and strange flares of light in these pictures. But I kind of like them. It adds a little of the old world feel that these images have. And who's to say that the smudges of light in the cemetery picture are flaws in my lens and not civil war ghosts?

-Janet Worne