Camera is a remarkable piece of innovation. However, it is the person behind the camera that makes it truly remarkable. It’s his imagination, passion, talent and knowledge of the medium. You don’t need a high-end costly equipment to get beautiful results. Just your talent and a way of looking at things differently along with ability to envision the final result in your mind is more than enough for a great shot.
What is a pinhole camera?
A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture — effectively a light-proof box with a small hole on one side.
Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. You can easily construct this camera yourself using things lying around like match boxes or any kind of boxes, paper, duct tape etc. The small amount of light passing through this pin sized hole produces image on a photographic film or a image sensor.
Further Reading on SmashingMag:
- Uncovering Toy Cameras and Polaroid Vintage Effects
- 50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography
- Useful Photoshop Tips And Tricks For Photo Retouching
- The Disturbing Beauty Of Oversaturated Pictures and Lomography
If you don’t want to get your hands dirty on creating a pinhole camera by yourself, you can use your DSLR with some modifications (replacing camera lenses with a pinhole cover). Although it takes practice and lot of trial and error method to get a perfect picture, you don’t need to worry about the focus and distortions, as there are no lenses involved. You might as well end up with some lovely motion blurred photographs.
In this post we present beautiful and inspiring photographs created using a pinhole camera. Please notice how photographers use the camera creatively to produce quite remarkable images. At the bottom of this post you will find links to some photographers and references to related resources that will help you get you started. Also, we listed related Flickr pools that contain thousands of further examples of what can be achieved with this technique. Get inspired, folks!
Beautiful Inspiring Pinhole Photography
The calmness of blue by Andrew Watson
A. Wallis
An Oceanic Ghost Forest by Danielle Hughson
The Iron Cycloid by Scott Speck
The Sleeping Zebra by Scott Speck
Follow The Tunes by Tim Franco
Celeste Brignac
A. Wallis
Remarkable Photographers
And here is a brief overview of some remarkable pinhole photographers from Flickr. They have added a new dimension to photography: their photo streams are full of beautiful photographs.
Zeb Andrews
Tea Room
Scott Speck
Further Resources
- The Ultimate Guide to Create Your Own 35mm Pinhole Camera.
- Exposure Times for Pinhole Photography
- Photography 101 – Light and the Pinhole Camera
- Turn Your DSLR into a Pinhole Camera
- DIY: Pinhole Lego Camera
- Pinhole Calculator
- Flickr Pool: Pinhole
- Flickr Pool: Pinhole Photography
- Flickr Pool: Color Pinhole Photography
- Flickr Pool: Polaroid Pinhole
- Flickr Pool: Pinhole Perspective