The Rasin Camera

Hello and welcome to another blog post. This post will be dedicated to my first unit for my course titled Light Sound and Time. So far this class is based around the study of light, sound, time and their importance in our everyday lives. This first unit was based on light, so we’ve done research on what it is, and the purposes it serves us. Light itself is an energy source that we use to power certain objects. We also got to learn about the electromagnetic spectrum which is the span of light based on how much energy it produces. We also learned about eyes themselves, how they work, and what purposes they serve for us and other animals. This led us to go to an eye doctor to learn about how to test how effective certain eyes can be. For our first action project this term we were tasked with creating our own pinhole cameras based on what we’ve learned in class.

                                           

"Cardboard 9x12 Pinhole Camera" by svofski is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

A pinhole camera is a camera that’s used to capture light over a small period of time. When a point in the camera is open for a certain period, it’s used to capture an object through light. This can be used to capture almost any object and is essential to see certain images. The insides of the camera are painted all black to make sure no light gets inside of the camera. Once light gets inside, it travels through a piece of paper that creates the picture.

When creating it myself there were many steps in the process. First I needed to find something that it could be created out of which I chose a raisin box. When making one, it's important to find something that can cover outside lights because they can mess up an image very easily. Once I found it, I painted the inside of it black to make sure that no light could get inside the container itself. One issue I ran into was that the top to my container was clear so light could still go through it. This led to me taping it over and then painting it black. Once that part was finished, I then stuck a small hole in the middle of the camera. This allows only a small bit of light to get into the camera itself allowing for an image to be made. The last thing I did was stick tape onto the top covering in the camera itself which allowed for light to only get into the camera during certain circumstances. 

Here's a picture of my pinhole camera below:

"Homemade Pinhole Camera", By RBL, 2023

The insides of the camera are painted black to stop light from getting into the image. The issue being, if too much light gets through a picture will end up showing up as black. If the inside is painted a certain way, it allows for less light to get through and the picture to be more clear. One thing that is interesting with my camera is how it’s affected by the electromagnetic spectrum.

 The electromagnetic spectrum ( EM Spectrum ) is a spectrum of light that shows the span of light based on how powerful they are. Some of the parts of this spectrum are gamma rays, x rays, ultra violet, and microwaves. Some of these light forms are more powerful than others. There's also a part of this spectrum known as the visible spectrum which consists of colors that we can actually see. For us, it goes from purple to red for the most powerful colors. 

Here's a chart that gives the idea:

"Humanly Visible Spectrum" by entirelysubjective is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

This is shown by the process some parts of an image go through to become visible over time. Though the images are black and white, they are visible to us. Another part of this process was dipping each camera in different chemicals to help see the photo. I decided to get a picture of a clear prism because I was curious how a clear object might show up in comparison to a solid one.

Reflection and refraction are two things we've often talked about in class a lot. As a camera, my camera shows refraction because of how it bends in certain ways. Because it's going through the hole on my camera, it allows for light to hit the paper one the inside creating an image.

The key part of this process was making sure that my camera was far enough from my pictures. I also needed specific heights, widths, and distance overall. Here's all of that data below:

Distance from lens to photo paper: 4 inches
Height of pinhole: 3.5

height of the object:10.3
Minimum distance from camera: 7.77

"Pinhole Photo Setup", RBL, 2023

Here's a diagram of how this shows up on a triangle diagram along with how I got each side:

"Triangle Diagram",RBL, 2023 

Theta: Tan-1 (4/3.5) = 48.81 degrees

Right Degree: 90 + 48.81 = 138.81 -> 180 - 138.81 = 41.19 degrees 

Opposites: 

W1 = 4 in

3.5  .  10.3       41.2 = 3.5x

4     .     x    ->   3.5  =  3.5   -> 11.77 = w2 

Adjacents:
H1 = 3.5 in
H2 = 10.3 in

Hypotenuses:

4^2 + 3.5^2 = (Sq Root) 28.25^2 -> 5.31 = C1

10.^2 + 11.77^2 = (Sq Root) 244.229^2 -> 15.64 = C2

Getting the minimum distance:

 

W2 - W1:

11.77 - 4 = 7.77 

When taking pictures, I ended up having enough time to take two pictures with my pinhole camera. For the first one we had our cameras open for 5 minutes. For my second one, I wanted to try leaving it open for a slightly longer period which ended up being for 7 minutes. The thing I had to keep in mind was that the camera itself will see the object in a different way than I do. This can affect how the final image might look depending on how the camera is setup. 

Here's an idea of how my camera saw my object:

"Camera View", RBL, 2023

Here's how both turned out:

"Pinhole Picture 1", RBL, 2023

"Pinhole Picture 2", RBL, 2023

Both pictures ended up turning out this way because of how the chemicals mixed overtime. I did make a mistake of not having both sit in the chemicals as long as they should've so that might've caused this result as well. Even so, the parts that are visible are very clean and it allowed me to get an image of my picture and someone else's. This all turned to to be an interesting experiment.

Overall, I’m really proud of how my pictures came out. It also helped me to appreciate cameras now and understand the ways that they changed since the 1800s. Even with that, it was often a struggle for me to find objects to use for a pinhole camera and had me struggling to find a proper object. The object ended up working in an effective way with the camera which did lead to great pictures. If I were to try this again, I would see if I could use a different shape for my camera and see how that would affect the process. I would also want to see if exposing less light to my photo would produce a different image because I left both my photos out for longer periods of time.