PINHOLE
PINHOLE | is a section, as its name says, dedicated to pinhole photography. This type of photography is created with a pinhole camera, a camera that uses a small aperture, usually the size of a pinhole, instead of a lens. Basically, the smaller the hole, the sharper the resulting image. Because of their simplicity, pinhole cameras are often handmade. The concept behind the pinhole camera—the camera obscura—dates back to the time of the ancient Greeks and Chinese. It was even mentioned by great thinkers like Aristotle, Euclid, and Mo Jing. However, the first photograph created with a pinhole camera was by a Scottish scientist, Sir David Brewster in the 1850s.
ROBERT GOJEVIĆ | editor of Pinhole |
PINHOLE | Patrick Caloz, Switzerland | BLUR MAGAZINE 24
“For me, pinhole photography is the ideal way to discover a city. I really see the city and absorb its atmosphere. What is interesting is that we are accomplices, my box and I. It only captures what does not move, everything else disappears to make room for the imagination of those who see my photos.”
Pinhole Photography
by Denis Pleić Pinhole photography is photography done without using any kind of lens, i.e. by using a lensless camera. The optical principle which is the basis for pinhole photography has been known for centuries in various cultures (Chinese, Arabic and Greek), which later became known as “camera obscura” (Latin for “dark room”). A “camera obscura” was often a darkened room with a small hole in a covered window, through which the outside world was projected on the opposite wall, as an upside down image. “Camera obscura” was often used by painters as a visual aid: Canaletto is said to have used it extensively for his Venetian vistas. Strictly speaking, the difference between a “camera obscura” and a “pinhole camera” is that the pinhole camera uses a photographic material to record the actual image, while “camera obscura” only projects the image, without recording it. Pinhole camera is a light-tight box with a small hole (pinhole) that projects an image to the light-sensitive material (film or photographic paper) on the opposite side of the box. A pinhole camera, usually of a “do-it-yourself” variety, used to be one of the basic teaching aids in photography, and was often the first “real” camera for kids during the film era. Nowadays, pinhole cameras are often of the digital kind, where image is recorded on a digital sensor through a lens/body cap with integrated pinhole. The smaller the pinhole, the sharper the image will be – up to a certain point, when fuzziness caused by diffraction comes into play. Without going into more technicalities, suffice to say that for each focal length (i.e. pinhole to film distance) there is an optimum size pinhole, which yields the sharpest results. Devising an optimum size pinhole for a given size of a projected image/negative was not always an easy task: the first formula for pinhole size calculation was calculated by Josef Petzval in 1857, but the optimal calculation was formulated in 1880s by Lord Rayleigh. For the sharpest image possible when using a pinhole camera, it is usually also recommended to use a laser-drilled pinhole, since it is perfectly round, and usually in very thin material. However, the pinhole aficionados will usually say that the perfect sharpness is not what pinhole imagery is all about: it simply has a different aesthetic, where the dreamy, soft imagery is far more important than a cold and perfectly sharp and “sterile” reflection of reality.