History of Pinhole Cameras
The observation of an inverted image of the scene outside through pinprick hole led to the development of modern photography. It took thousands of years to create the first actual camera, the light-sensitive media the image was recorded upon, and the chemicals to create an actual photograph, but the principal already was there.
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History
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Many scientists and others observed and wrote about the phenomenon from the ancient Chinese to the Greeks. But it wasn't until the 11th century that someone actually wrote about the principals of the pinhole camera and created the camera obscura to study it. Ibn al-Haytham wrote his "Book of Optics" in 1021, and created his own pinhole camera, then later the camera obscura.
Basics
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Al-Haytham discovered he could sharpen his reflected, inverted image by shrinking the pinhole or aperture. Essentially, a pinhole camera is a light-tight box, usually rounded like an oatmeal box, with a pinhole in one side. The image outside the camera is projected through the pinhole where it is reversed and shown upside down on the rear of the box. With no film yet available to record the image, al-Haytham constructed the camera obscura, which is a room-sized pinhole camera where the observer can get inside the apparatus and observe the image.
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Significance
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For hundreds of years, people used the camera obscura/pinhole camera to draw or paint the image projected. They used people, animals and landscapes as their models. While these images were not exact, they were an important step on the way to photography, because the pinhole camera served as a model for the first cameras.
Effects
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By the middle 1800s, photography was in full swing because light-sensitive material and the chemicals to produce and stabilize images had been invented. Sir David Brewster, inventor of the kaleidoscope, was the first to use light-sensitive film to record an image in a pinhole camera. By the late 1800s, photographs taken with pinhole cameras came into vogue because the images produced had a dreamy, soft-focus effect that was a stark contrast to sharp images taken through lenses. There is no lens in a pinhole camera.
Benefits
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Discarded as quaint for many years, pinhole cameras first made a comeback with artists in the 1960s. Since then, they have become the focus of hobbyists, Cub Scout packs and other educational venues. Since all it takes to build one is an oatmeal box and some light-sensitive paper or film, the pinhole camera can teach children about physics, light and photography with a little bit of the old "gosh, wow" effect.
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