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Camera is a remarkable piece of innovation. However, it is people — professionals and newbies alike — who make it truly remarkable. It’s the photographer behind the camera. It’s his imagination, passion and 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 is together more than enough for a great shot. It’s also the ability to envision the final result in your mind which is also important.
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 in 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 by 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 CCD sensor.
If you don’t want to get your hands dirty on creating a pin hole camera by yourself, you can use your DSLR with some modifications (replacing camera lenses with a pinhole). Also, pinhole cameras are available in the market: and they are quite popular, too — after all, you don’t have to worry about the focus and distortions as there are no lenses involved. Also, you might end up with lovely motion blurred photographs.
In today’s weekend 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 which contain thousands of further examples of what can be achieved with this technique. Get inspired, folks!
[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]
Beautiful Inspiring Pinhole Camera Photographs
The calmness of blue by Andrew Watson
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
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
- 20 Strange Beautiful Pinhole Cameras
- Turn Your DSLR into a Pinhole Camera
- Turn Your Holga into a Pinhole Camera
- DIY: Pinhole Lego Camera
- DIY: Panoramic Pinhole Camera
- Pinhole Calculator
- Flickr Pool: Pinhole
- Flickr Pool: Pinhole Photography
- Flickr Pool: Color Pinhole Photography
- Flickr Pool: Polaroid Pinhole
- Flickr Pool: Pinhole Perspective
© vailrodrigues for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: photography, photos, pinhole